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MILTON 

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ADDISON 

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PREFACE 



Julius Caesar and Lord Macaulay have been 
much abused writers. They did not mean to 
write immortal works, least of all did they mean 
to write immortal exercises for the school-room. 
But when a man writes — just as he would fight, 
on the field of battle or in the political arena — 
with what Q,uintilian describes as "force, point, 
and vehemence of style," he must expect the 
school-boy to devour his pages. This is right, — 
this is not abuse; the abuse is done when live 
literature is transformed into dead rhetoric, a 
thing for endless exercises in etymologies and con- 
structions, until the very name of the author 
becomes odious. Perhaps it is late for this com- 
plaint ; we flatter .ourselves that we are coming to 
reason and balance in our methods. Certainly I 
should not try to discourage study, and liberal 
study, of the mechanics of composition. And 
there is no better medium for such study than 
Macaulay 's Essays. But I trust that every teacher 
to whom the duty of conducting such study falls 
will not at the same time forget that literature is 
an art which touches life very closely, and has its 
springs far back in the human spirit. 



8 PREFACE 

With the hope of encouraging this -attitude I 
have ventured to assume the responsibility of 
setting afloat one more annotated text of Macau- 
lay. Eealizing that, in dealing with the work of 
a writer whose affiliations with literature are 
chiefly formal (Introduction, 19), there is no 
escape from considerations of style, I have frankly 
put the matter foremost. But I have tried to 
take a broad view of its significance, and in 2:>artic- 
ular I have tried to do Macaulay justice. Alto- 
gether too many j^upils have carried away from the 
study of him the narrow idea that his great 
achievement consisted in using one or two very 
patent (but, if they only knew it, very petty) rhetor- 
ical devices. It has been the primary aim of my 
Introduction to set these matters in their right 
perspective. I have not outlined specific methods 
of study, which are to be found everywhere by 
those who value them, but both Introduction and 
Notes contain many suggestions. It seems better 
to stop at this. Even the few illustrations I have 
used have been preferably drawn from essa^^s not 
here printed. No editor should wish to take from 
teacher or pupil the profit of investigation or the 
stimulus of discovery. 

There is another matter in which I should like 
to counsel vigilance, and that is the habit of 
requiring pupils to trace allusions, quotations, etc. 
The practice has been much abused, and a warning 
seems especially necessary in the study of a writer 



PREFACE 9 

like Macaulay, who crowds his pages with instances 
and illustrations. It is profitable to follow him in 
the process of bringing together a dozen things to 
enforce his point, but it is not profitable to reverse 
the process and allow ourselves to be led away from 
the subject in hand into a multitude of unrelated 
matters. Such practices are ruinous to the intel- 
lect. We must concentrate attention, not dissi- 
pate it. Only when we fail to catch the full 
significance of an allusion, should ^we look it up. 
Then we must see to it that we bring back from 
our research jast what occasioned the allusion, just 
what bears on the immediate passage. Other facts 
will be picked up by the way and may come use- 
ful in good time, but for the purpose of our pres- 
ent study we should insist on the vital relation of 
every fact contributed. 

So earnest am I upon this point that I must 
illustrate. At one place Macaulay writes: "Do 
we believe that Erasmus and Fracastorius wrote 
Latin as well as Dr. Robertson and Sir Walter 
Scott wrote English? And are there not in the 
Dissertation on India, the last of Dr. Robertson's 
works, in Waverley, in Marmion, Scotticisms at 
which a London apprentice would laugh?" Why 
should we be told (to pick out one of these half- 
dozen allusions) that Dr. Robertson's first name was 
William, that he lived from 1721 to 1793, and 
that he wrote such and such books? With all 
respect for the memory of Dr. Robertson, I submit 



10 PREFACE 

that this is not the place to learn about him and 
his histories. Macaulay's allusion to him is not 
explained in the least by giving his date. Yet 
there is something here to interpret, simple though 
it be. Let us put questions until we are sure that 
the pupil understands that Dr. Eobertson, being a 
Scot, could not write wholly idiomatic English — 
English, say, of the London type — and that this is 
one illustration of the general truth that a man 
can write with purity only in his native tongue. 
It is such exercises in interpretation that I should 
like to see substituted for the disastrous game of 
hunting allusions. 

I cannot flatter myself that I have achieved con- 
sistency in my own notes and glossary. To recur 
to the illustration above, I ha^e omitted the name 
of Dr. Robertson, because Macaulay seems to tell 
us enough about him, while I have added a few 
words about Fracastorius in order that he may be 
to the reader something more than a name. But 
I cannot help suspecting that it is a waste of 
energy for any one to try to impress even this name 
on his mind, and I should be quite satisfied that a 
pupil of mine should never look it up, provided 
he had alertness enough to see that Fracastorius 
wrote in Latin though he was not a Roman, and 
discrimination enough to feel that there are other 
allusions of an entirely different character which 
must be looked up. 

The glossary aims to include only names and 



PREFACE 11 

terms not familiar or easily found (provided they 
need explaining), and also names which, though 
easily found, call for some special comment. In 
general, when allusions are self-explaining, we 
should rest content with our text. In the first 
paragraph of the essay on Milton, for example, 
one Mr. Lemon is mentioned. Doubtless the 
Dictionary of National Biography would tell us 
something more about him, but Macaulay tells us 
all we need to know. Again, there is a reference 
to a fairy story told by Ariosto. But all the neces- 
sary details are given and it will be idle to hunt 
the story up in order to cite chapter and verse for 
it, though of course if one wants to read Ariosto, 
let him do so by all means — that is a different 
thing. On the other hand, an allusion to the lion 
in a certain fable is not made so clear, because 
Macaulay takes it for granted that we know the 
fable. If we do not, we must look it up. So, 
also, with such phrases as "the Ciceronian gloss," 
"the doubts of the Academy," "the pride of the 
Portico." I could have wished to insert into 
the glossary nothing which an . intelligent pupil 
could find for himself, though here an editor 
must sin a little in excess for the sake of schools 
and homes not well equipped with libraries. I 
have tried to decide each case upon its merits in 
the interest of genuine education, and only those 
who have attempted a similar task will understand 
its difficulties. 



12 PREFACE 

The text adopted is that of Lady Trevelyan's 
edition, with very slight changes in spelling, punc- 
tuation, and capitals. A. G. No 

Stanford University, May, 1899. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface 7 

Introduction 15 

Chronology and Bibliography 43 

The Essays: 

Milton , 45 

The Life and "Writings of Addison 125 

Notes 250 

Glossary 268 

Appendix 

Helps to Study 275 

Theme Subjects ..... ..o ... 279 

Selections for Class Eeading . . o . .. . . 280 

Chronological Table .... o = o .», 281 



INTRODUCTION 



When, in 1825, Francis Jeffrey, Editor of the 
Edinburgh Review^ searching for "some clever 
i.Macauiay'sAd-yonug man who would writc for 
vent in the Edin- us, "laid his hands upon Thomas 
burgrh Review, g^^^ington Macaulaj, he did not 
know that he was marking a red-letter day in the 
calendar of English journalism. Through the two 
decades and more of its existence, the Revieiu had 
gone on serving its patrons with the respectable 
dulness of Lord Brougham and the respectable 
vivacity of its editor, and the patrons had appar- 
ently dreamed of nothing better until the 
momentous August when the young Fellow of 
Trinity, not yet twenty-five, flashed upon its pages 
with his essay on Milton. And for the next two 
decades the essays that followed from the same pen 
became so far the mainstay of the magazine that 
booksellers declared it "sold, or did not sell, 
according as there were, or were not, articles by 
Mr. Macaulay." Yet Jeffrey was not without 
some inkling of the significance of the event, for 
upon receipt of the first manuscript he wrote to its 
author the words so often quoted: "The more I 
think, the less I can conceive where you picked 
15 



16 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

up that style." Thus early was the finger of 
criticism pointed toward the one thing that has 
always been most conspicuously associated with 
Macaulay's name. 

English prose, at this date, was still clinging to 

the traditions of its measured eighteenth-century 

stateliness. But the life had 

2. Effect on Prose. , « ., t n 

nearly gone out of it, and the 
formalism which sat so elegantly upon Addison 
and not uneasily upon Johnson had stiffened into 
pedantry, scarcely relieved by the awkward 
attempts of the younger journalists to give it spirit 
and freedom. It was this languishing prose which 
Macaulay, perhaps more than any other one writer, 
deserves the credit of rejuvenating with that 
wonderful something which Jeffrey was pleased 
to call "style." Macaulay himself would certainly 
have deprecated the association of his fame with a 
mere synonym for rhetoric, and we should be 
wronging him if we did not hasten to add that 
style, rightly understood, is a very large and 
significant thing, comprehending, indeed, a man's 
whole intellectual and emotional attitude toward 
those phases of life with which he comes into con- 
tact. It is the man's manner of reacting upon the 
world, his manner of expressing himself to the 
world ; and the world has little beyond the man- 
ner of a man's expression by which to judge of the 
man himself. But a good style, even in its nar- 
row sense of a good command of language, of a 



INTRODUCTION 17 

masterly and individual manner of presenting 
thought, is yet no mean accomplishment, and if 
Macaulay had done nothing else than revivify 
English prose, which is, just possibly, his most 
enduring achievement, he would have little reason 
to complain. What he accomplished in this 
direction and how, it is our chief purpose here to 
explain. In the meantime we shall do well to 
glance at his other achievements and take some 
note of his equipment. 

Praed has left this description of him: "There 
came up a short, manly figure, marvelously upright, 
with a bad neckcloth, and one 
hand in his waistcoat-pocket." 
We read here, easily enough, brusqueness, pre- 
cision without fastidiousness, and self-confidence. 
These are all prominent traits of the man, and 
they all show in his work. Add kindness and 
moral rectitude, which scarcely show there, and 
humor, which shows only in a somewhat unpleasant 
light, and you have a fair portrait. Now these are 
manifestly the attributes of a man who knows 
what worldly comfort and physical well-being are, 
a man of good digestive and assimilative powers, 
well-fed, incapable of worry, born to succeed. 

In truth, Macaulay was a man of remarkable 
vitality and energy, and though he died too early 
— at the beginning of his sixtieth year — he began 
his work young and continued it with almost 
unabated vigor to the end. But his "work" (as 



18 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

we are in the habit of naming that which a man 
leaves behind him), vohiminous as it is, represents 
only one side of his activity. There was the 
early-assumed burden of repairing his father's 
broken fortunes, and providing for the family of 
younger brothers and sisters. The burden, it is 
true, was assumed with characteristic cheerfulness 
— it could not destroy for him the worldly comfort 
we have spoken of — but it entailed heavy responsi- 
bilities for a young man. It forced him to seek 
salaried positions, such as the post of commissioner 
of bankruptcy, when he might have been more 
congenially employed. Then there were the many 
years spent in the service of the government as a 
Whig member of the House of Commons and as 
Cabinet Minister during the exciting period of the 
Reform Bill and the Anti-Corn-Law League, with 
all that such service involved — study of politics, 
canvassing, countless dinners, public and private, 
speech-making in Parliament and out, reading and 
making reports, endless committee meetings, end- 
less sessions. There were the three years and a 
half spent in India, drafting a penal code. And 
there was, first and last, the acquisition of the 
knowledge that made possible this varied activity, 
— the years at the University, the study of law and 
jurisprudence, the reading, not of books, but of 
entire national literatures, the ransacking of 
libraries and the laborious deciphering of hundreds 
of manuscripts in the course of historical 



INTRODUCTION 19 

research. Perhaps we fall into Macaulay's trick 
of exaggeration, bat it is not easy to exaggerate the 
mental feats of a man who could carry in his 
memory works like Paradise Lost and Pilgrim'' s 
Progress and who was able to put it on record 
that in thirteen months he had read thirty clas- 
sical authors, most of them entire and many of 
them twice, and among them such voluminous 
writers as Euripides, Herodotus, Plato, Plutarch, 
Livy, and Cicero. Nor was the classical literature 
a special field; Italian, Spanish, French, and the 
wildernesses of the English drama and the Eng- 
lish novel (not excluding the "trashy") were alJ 
explored. We may well be astounded that the 
man who could do all these things in a lifetime 
of moderate compass, and who was besides such a 
tireless pedestrian that he was "forever on his feet 
indoors as well as out," could find time to produce 
so much literature of his own. 

That literature — so to style the body of work 

which has survived him — divides itself into at least 

five divisions. There are, first, 

4. His Work. , ^-i 

the Essays, which he produced 
at intervals all through life. There are the 
Speeches which were delivered on the floor of 
Parliament between his first election in 1830 and 
his last in 1852, and which rank very high in that 
grade of oratory which is just below the highest. 
There is the Indian Penal Code, not altogether his 
own work and not literature of course, yet praised 



20 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

by Justice Stephen as one of the most remarkable 
and satisfactory instruments of its kind ever 
drafted. There are the Poems, publisheij in 
1842, adding little to his fame and not a great 
deal to English literature, yet very respectable 
achievements in the field of the modern romantic 
ballad. Finally, there is the unfinished History of 
England from the Accession of James the Second, 
his last, his most ambitious, and probably, all 
things considered, his most successful work. 

The History and Essays comprise virtually all of 
this product that the present generation cares to 
5. History of read. Upon the History, indeed, 
England. Macaulay staked his claim to 
future remembrance, regarding it as the great work 
of his life. He was exceptionally well equipped 
for the undertaking. He had such a grasp of uni- 
versal history as few men, have been able to secure, 
and a detailed knowledge of the period of English 
history under contemplation equalled by none. 
But he delayed the undertaking too long, and he 
allowed his time and energy to be dissipated in 
obedience to party calls. Death overtook him in 
the midst of his labors. Even thus, it is clear 
that he underestimated the magnitude of the task 
he had set himself. Eor he proposed to cover a 
period of nearly a century and a half; the four 
volumes and a fraction which he completed actually 
cover about fifteen years. His plan involved too 
much detail. It has been called pictorial history 



INTRODUCTION 21 

writing, and such it was. History was to be as 
vital and as human as romance. It was to be in 
every sense a restoration of the life of the past. 
Macaulay surely succeeded in this aim, as his 
fascinating third chapter will always testify; 
whether the aim were a laudable orie, we cannot 
stop here to discuss. Historians will continue to 
point out the defects of the work, its diffuseness, 
its unphilosophical character, perhaps its partisan 
spirit. But it remains a magnificent fragment, and 
it will be read by thousands who could never be 
persuaded to look into dryer though possibly 
sounder works. Indeed, there is no higher tribute 
to its greatness than the objection that has some- 
times been brought against it, namely, that it 
treats a comparatively unimportant era of Eng- 
land's history with such fulness and brilliance, and 
has attracted to it so many readers, that the other 
eras are thrown sadly out of perspective. 

But Macaulay's name is popularly associated 
with that body of Essays which in bulk alone 
(always excepting Sainte- 
Beuve's) are scarcely exceeded 
by the product of any other essay-writer in an 
essay-writing age. And the 23opular judgment 
which has insisted upon holding to this sup- 
posedly ephemeral w^ork is not far wrong. With 
all their faults upon them, until we have something 
better in kind to replace them, we cannot consent 
to let them go. In one sense, their range is not 



S2 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

wide, for they fall naturally into but two divisions, 
the historical and the critical. To these Mr. 
Morison would add a third, the controversial, 
comprising the four essays on Mill, Sadler, 
Southey, and Gladstone ; but these are comparatively 
unimportant. In another sense, however, their 
range is very wide. For each one gathers about a 
central subject a mass of details that in the hands 
of any other writer would be bewildering, while 
the total knowledge that supports the bare arrays 
of fact and perpetual press of allusions betrays a 
scope that, to the ordinary mind, is quite beyond 
comprehension. 

And the more remarkable must this work appear 
when we consider the manner of its production. 
Most of the essays were published anonymously in 
the Edinhurgli Eevieiv, a few early ones in 
Knight's Quarterly Magazine^ five (those on 
Atterbury, Bunyan, Goldsmith, Johnson, and 
Pitt), written late in life, in the EncyclopcBclia 
Britannica. The writing of them was always an 
avocation with Macaulay, never a vocation. Those 
produced during his parliamentary life were usually 
written in the hours between early rising and 
breakfast. Some were composed at a distance 
from his books. He scarcely dreamed of their 
living beyond the quarter of their publication, cer- 
tainly not beyond the generation for whose enter- 
tainment they were written with all the devices to 
catch applause and all the disregard of permanent 



INTRODUCTION 23 

merit which writing for such r. purpose invites. 
He could scarcely be induced, even after they were 
pirated and republished in America, to reissue 
them in a collected edition, with his revision and 
under his name. These facts should be remem- 
bered in mitigation of the severe criticism to which 
they are sometimes subjected. 

Between the historical and the critical essays we 
are not called upon to decide, though the decision 
is by no means difficult. Macaulay was essentially 
a historian, a story-teller, and the historical essay, 
or short monograph on the events of a single period 
that usually group themselves about some great 
statesman or soldier, he made peculiarly his own. 
He did not invent it, as Mr. Morison points out, 
but Ire expanded and improved it until he "left it 
complete and a thing of power." Fully a score of 
his essays — more than half the total number — are 
of this description, the most and the best of them 
dealing with English history. Chief among them 
are the essays on Hallam, Temple, the Pitts, Clive, 
and AYarren Hastings. The critical essays — upon 
Johnson, Addison, Bunyan, and other men of 
letters — are in every way as admirable reading as 
the historical. They must take a lower rank only 
because Macaulay lacked some of the prime 
requisites of a successful critic — broad and deep 
sympathies, refined tastes, and nice perception ol 
the more delicate tints and shadings that count for 
almost everything in a work of high art. His 



24 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

critical judgments are likely to be blunt, positive, 
and superficial. Bat they are never actually shal- 
low and rarely without a modicum of truth. And 
they are never uninteresting. For, true to his 
narrative instinct, he always interweaves biog- 
raphy. And besides, the essays have the same 
rhetorical qualities that mark with distinction 
all the prose he has written, that is to say, the 
same masterly method and the same compelling 
style. It is to this method and style, that, after 
our rapid review of Macaulay's aims and accom- 
plishments, we are now ready to turn. 

There were two faculties of Macaulay's mind 
that set his work far apart from other work in 

7, Organizing the samc field — the faculties of 
Faculty. organization and illustration. 
He saw things in their right relation and he knew 
how to make others see them thus. If he was 
describing, he never thrust minor details into the 
foreground. If he was narrating, he never "got 
ahead of his story." The importance of this is not 
sufficiently recognized. Many writers do not know 
what organization means. They do not know that 
in all great and successful literary work it is nine- 
tenths of the labor. Yet consider a moment. 
History is a very complex thing : divers events may 
be simultaneous in their occurrence ; or one crisis 
may be slowly evolving from many causes in many 
places. It is no light task to tell these things one 
after another and yet leave a unified impression, to 



INTRODUCTION 25 

take np a dozen new threads in succession without 
tangling them and without losing the old ones, and 
to lay them all down at the right moment and 
without confusion. Such is the narrator's task, 
and it was at this task that Macaulay proved him- 
self a past master. He could dispose of a number 
of trivial events in a single sentence. Thus, for 
example, runs his account of the dramatist 
Wycherley's naval career: "He embarked, was 
present at a battle, and celebrated it, on his 
return, in a copy of verses too bad for the bell- 
man." On the other hand, when it is a question 
of a great crisis, like the impeachment of Warren 
Hastings, he knew how to prepare for it with 
elaborate ceremony and to portray it in a scene of 
the highest dramatic power. 

This faculty of organization shows itself in what 
we technically name structure; and logical and 
rhetorical structure may be studied at their very best 
in his work. His essays are perfect units, made 
up of many parts, systems within systems, that 
play together without clog or friction. You can 
take them apart like a watch and put them 
together again. But try to rearrange the parts aud 
the mechanism is spoiled. Each essay has its 
subdivisions, which in turn are groups of para- 
graphs. And each paragraph is a unit. Take the 
first paragraph of the essay on Milton : the word 
manuscript appears in the first sentence, and it 
reappears in the last ; clearly the paragraph deals 



26 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

with a single very definite topic. And so with all. 
Of course the unity manifests itself in a hundred 
ways, but it is rarely wanting. Most frequently it 
takes the form of an expansion of a topic given in 
the first sentence, or a preparation for a topic to 
be announced only in the last. These initial and 
final sentences — often in themselves both aphoristic 
and memorable — serve to mark with the utmost 
clearness the different stages in the progress of the 
essay. 

Illustration is of more incidental service, but as 
used by Macaulay becomes highly organic. For 

8. luuatratinff his illustratious are not far- 
Facuity. fetched or laboriously worked 
out. They seem to be of one piece with his story 
or his argument. His mind was quick to detect re- 
semblances and analogies. He was ready with a 
comparison for everything, sometimes with half a 
dozen. For example, Addison's essays, he has 
occasion to say, were different every day of the week, 
and yet, to his mind, each day like something — 
like Horace, like Lucian, like the "Tales of 
Scheherezade." He draws long comparisons 
between Walpole and Townshend, between Con- 
greve and Wycherley, between Essex and Villiers, 
between the fall of the Carlovingians and the fall 
of the Moguls. He follows up a general statement 
with swarms of instances. Have historians been 
given to exaggerating the villainy of Machiavelli? 
Macaulay can name you half a dozen who did so. 



INTRODUCTION 27 

Did the writers of Charles's faction delight in mak- 
ing their opponents appear contemptible? "They 
have told us that Pym broke down in a speech, 
that Ireton had his nose pulled by Hollis, that the 
Earl of Northumberland cudgelled Henry Marten, 
that St. John's manners were sullen, that Vane 
had an ugly face, that Cromwell had a red nose." 
Do men fail when they quit their own province for 
another? Newton failed thus ; Bentley failed ; Inigo 
Jones failed; Wilkie failed. In the same way he 
was ready with quotations. He writes in one of 
his letters: "It is a dangerous thing for a man 
with a very strong memory to read very much. I 
could give you three or four quotations this 
moment in support of that proposition; but I will 
bring the vicious propensity under subjection, if I 
can." Thus we see his mind doing instantly and 
involuntarily what other minds do with infinite 
pains, bringing together all things that have a 
likeness or a common bearing. 

Both of these faculties, for organization and for 

illustration, are to be partially explained by his 

marvelous memory. As we have 

9. Memory. "^ 

seen, he read everything, and he 
seems to have been incapable of forgetting any- 
thing. The immense advantage which this gave 
him over other men is obvious. He who carries 
his library in his mind wastes no time in turning 
up references. And surveying the whole field of 
his knowledge at once, with outlines and details 



28 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

all in immediate range, he should be able to see 
things in their natural perspective. Of course it 
does not follow that a great memory will always 
enable a man to systematize and synthesize, but it 
should make it easier for its possessor than for other 
men, while the power of ready illustration which 
it affords him is beyond question. 

It is precisely these talents that set Macaulay 
among the simplest and clearest of writers, and 

10. Clearness and that aCCOUUt for mucll of his 

Simplicity. popularity. People found that in 
taking up one of his articles they simply read on 
and on, never puzzling over the meaning of a 
sentence, getting the exact force of every state- 
ment, and following the trend of thought with 
scarcely a mental effort. And his natural gift of 
making things plain he took pains to support by 
various devices. He constructed his sentences 
after the simplest normal fashion, subject and 
verb and object, sometimes' inverting for emphasis, 
but rarely complicating, and always reducing 
expression to the barest terms. He could write, 
for example, "One advantage the chaplain had," 
but it is impossible to conceive of his writing, 
"Now amid all the discomforts and disadvantages 
with which the unfortunate chaplain was sur- 
rounded, there was one thing which served to offset 
them, and which, if he chose to take the oppor. 
tunity of enjoying it, might well be regarded as a 
positive advantage." One will search his pages in 



INTRODUCTION 29 

vain for loose, trailing clanses and involved con- 
stractions. His vocabulary was of the same simple 
nature. He had a complete command of ordinary 
English and contented himself with that. He 
rarely ventured beyond the most abridged diction- 
ary. An occasional technical term might be re- 
quired, but he was shy of the unfamiliar. He 
would coin no words and he would use no 
archaisms. Foreign words, when fairly naturalized, 
he employed sparingly. "We shall have no dis- 
putes about diction," he wrote to Napier, Jeffrey's 
successor; "the English language is not so poor 
but that I may very well find in it the means of 
contenting both you and myself." 

Now all of these things are wholly admirable, 

and if they constituted the sum total of Macaulay's 

method, as they certainly do con- 

11. Force. . , -, . i „ <, • , 

stitute the chief features of it, we 
should pass our word of praise and have done. 
But he did not stop here, and often, unfortun- 
ately too often, these things are not thought of at 
all by those who profess to speak knowingly of his 
woilderful "style." For in addition to clearness he 
sought also force, an entirely legitimate object in 
itself and one in which he was merely giving way to 
his oratorical or journalistic instinct. Only, his 
fondness for effect led him too far and into various 
mannerisms, some of which it is quite impossible 
to approve. There is no question that they are 
powerfully effective, as they were meant to be. 



30 • MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

often rightly so, and they are exceedingly interest- 
ing to study, but for these very reasons the student 
needs to be warned against attaching to them an 
undue importance. 

Perhaps no one will quarrel with his liking for 

the specific and the concrete. This indeed is not 

mannerism. It is the natural 

12. Concreteness. » i • • • • t 

working of the imaginative mmd, 
of the picturing faculty, and is of the utmost value 
in forceful, vivid writing. The "ruffs and peaked 
beards of Theobald's" make an excellent passing 
allusion to the social life of the time of Queen 
Elizabeth and James the First. The manoeuvres 
of an army become intensely interesting when we 
see it "pouring through those wild passes which, 
worn by mountain torrents and dark with jungle, 
lead down from the table-land of Mysore to the 
plains of the Carnatic." A reference to the 
reputed learning of the English ladies of the six- 
teenth century is most cunningly put in the picture 
of "those fair pupils of Ascham and Aylmer who 
compared, over their embroidery, the styles of 
Isocrates and Lysias, and who, while the horns 
were sounding, and the dogs in full cry, sat in the 
lonely oriel, with eyes riveted to that immortal 
page which tells how meekly the first great martyr 
of intellectual liberty took the cup from his weep- 
ing gaoler." But when his eagerness for the con- 
cretely picturesque leads him to draw a wholly 
imaginary picture of how it may have come about 



INTRODUCTION 31 

that Addison had Steele arrested for debt, we are 
quite ready to protest. 

His tendency to exaggerate, moreover, and his 

love of pai'adox, belong in a very different 

category. Let the reader count 

13. Exaggeration. ., "^ / _ , . 

the strong words, superlatives, 
universal propositions, and the like, employed in a 
characteristic passage, and he will understand at 
once what is meant. In the essay on Frederic the 
Great we. read: "No sovereign has ever taken 
possession of a throne by a clearer title. All the 
politics of the Austrian cabinet had, during twenty 
years, been directed to one single end — the settle- 
ment of the succession. From every person whose 
rights could be considered as injuriously affected, 
renunciations in the most solemn form had been 
obtained." And not content with the ordinary 
resources of language, he has a trick of raising 
superlatives themselves, as it were, to the second 
or third power. "There can be little doubt that 
this great empire was, even in its best days, far 
worse governed than the worst governed parts of 
Europe now are." "What the Italian is to the 
Englishman, what the Hindoo is to the Italian, 
what the Bengalee is to other Hindoos, that was 
Nuncomar to other Bengalees." It is evident that 
this habit is a positive vice. He tried to exouse it 
on the ground that there is some inevitable loss in 
the communication of a fact from one mind to 
another, and that over -statement is necessary to 



32 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

correct the error. But the argument is fallacious. 
Macaulay did not have a monopoly of the imagi- 
native faculty : other men are as much given to 
exaggeration as he, and stories, as they pass from 
mouth to mouth, invariably "grow." 

His constant resort to antithesis to point his 
statements is another vice. "That government," 
14. Antithesis and he writcs of tho English rule in 
Balance. India, "opprcssive as the most 
oppressive form of barbarian despotism, was strong 
with all the strength of civilization." Again: 
"The Puritan had affected formality; the comic 
poet laughed at decorum. The Puritan had 
frowned at innocent diversions; the comic poet 
took under his patronage the most flagitious 
excesses. The Puritan had canted; the comic 
poet blasphemed." And so on, through a para- 
graph. Somewhat similar to this is his practice of 
presenting the contrary of a statement before pre- 
senting the statement itself, of telling us, for 
example, what might have been expected to happen 
before telling us what actually did happen. It is 
to be noticed that, accompanying this use of 
antithesis and giving it added force, there is 
usually a balance of form, that is, a more or less 
exact correspondence of sentence structure. Given 
one of Macaulay 's sentences presenting the first 
part of an antithesis, it is sometimes possible to 
foretell, word for word, what the next sentence 
will be. Such mechanical writing is certainly not 



INTRODUCTION 33 

to be commended as a model of style. Of course 
it is the abuse of these things and not the mere use 
of them that constitutes Macaulay's vice. 

There are still other formal devices which he 

uses so freely that we are j,ustified in calling them 

mannerisms. One of the most 

16. Minor Devices. . • i i 

conspicuous IS the short sentence, 
the blunt, unqualified statement of one thing at a 
time. No one who knows Macaulay would hesitate 
over the authorship of the following: "The shore 
was rocky: the night was black: the wind was 
furious : the waves of the Bay of Biscay ran high." 
The only wonder is that he did not punctuate it 
with four periods. He would apparently much 
rather repeat his subject and make a new sentence 
than connect his verbs. Instead of writing, ''He 
coaxed and wheedled," he is constantly tempted 
to write, "He coaxed, he wheedled," even though 
the practice involves prolonged reiteration of one 
form. The omission of connectives — rhetorical 
"asyndeton" — becomes itself a vice. The a7ids^ 
tliens^ therefores^ hoivevers, the reader must supply 
for himself. This demands alertness and helps to 
sustain interest; and while it may occasion a 
momentary perplexity, it will rarely do so when the 
reader comes to know the style and to read it with 
the right swing. But it all goes to enforce what 
Mr. John Morley calls the "unlovely staccato" of 
the style. It strikes harsh on the ear and on the 
brain, and from a piquant stimulant becomes an 



b^ MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

intolerable weariness. Separate things get 
emphasis, but the nice gradations and relations are 
sacrificed. 

After all, though we stigmatize these things as 

*' devices," intimating* that they were mechanical 

and arbitrary, we must reo^ard 

16. Dogmatism. , *^ ' ° , 

them as partly temperamental. 
Macaulay's mind was not subtle in its working and 
was not given to making nice distinctions. He 
cired chiefly for bold outlines and broad effects. 
Truth, to his mind, was sharply defined' from false- 
hood, right from wrong, good from evil. Every- 
thing could be divided from' everything else, 
labeled, and pigeon-holed. And he was very 
certain, in the fields which he chose to enter, that 
he knew where to draw the dividing lines. Posi- 
tiveness, self-confidence, are written all over his 
work. Set for a moment against his method the 
method of Matthew Arnold. This is how Arnold 
tries to point out a defect in modern English 
society: "And, owing to the same causes, does 
not a subtle criticism lead us to make, even on the 
good looks and politeness of our aristocratic class, 
and even of the most fascinating half of that class, 
the feminine half, the one qualifying remark, that 
in these charming gifts there should perhaps be, 
for ideal perfection, a shade more soul?^^ Note 
the careful approach, the constant, anxious qualifi- 
cation, working up to a climax in the almost 
painful hesitation of "a shade — more — soul.'*'' 



INTRODUCTION 35 

Imagine, if you can, Macaulay, the rongh rider, 
he of the "stamping emphasis," winding into a 
truth like that. But indeed it is quite impossible 
to imagine Macaulay 's having any truth at all to 
enunciate about so ethereal an attribute as this 
same soul. 

We have come well into the region of Macaulay's 
defects. Clearness, we have seen, he had in a 

17. Ornament, remarkable degree. Force he also 
Rhythm. \^^^ jj^ ^ remarkable degree, 
though he frequently abused the means of display- 
ing it. But genuine beauty, it is scarcely too 
much to say, he had not at all. Of course, much 
depends "upon our definitions. "We do not mean to 
deny to his writings all elements of charm. The 
very ease of his mastery over so many resources of 
composition gives pleasure to the reader. His 
frequent picturesqueness we have granted. He 
can be genuinely figurative, though his figures 
often incline to showiness. And above all he has 
a certain sense for rhythm. He can write long, 
sweeping sentences — periods that rise and descend 
with the feeling, and that come to a stately or 
graceful close. The sentence cited above about 
the learning of women in the sixteenth century 
may be taken as an example. Or read the sketch 
of the Catholic Church in the third paragraph of 
the essay on Von Eanke's History of the Popes, or 
the conclusion of the essay on Lord Holland, or 
better still the conclusion of the somewhat juvenile 



36 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

essay on Mitford's Greece, with its glowing trib- 
ute to Athejisand its famous picture of the "single 
naked fisherman washing his nets in the river of 
the ten thousand masts." But at best it is the 
rhythm of mere declamation, swinging and 
pompous. There is no fine flowing movement, 
nothing like the entrancing glides of a waltz or the 
airy steps of a minuet, but only a steady march to 
the interminable and monotonous beat of the 
drum. For real music, sweetness, subtle and 
involved harmony, lingering cadences, we turn to 
any one of a score of prose writers — Sir Thomas 
Browne, Addison, Burke, Lamb, De Quincey, Haw- 
thorne, Euskin, Pater, Stevenson — before we turn 
to Macaulay. Nor is there any other mere grace 
of composition in which he can be said to excel. 

There is no blame in the matter. We are only 
trying to note dispassionately the defects as well 

18. Tempera- ^s the excellcnces of a man who 

mental Defects, ^y^g j^q^ ^ Uuivcrsal gCuiuS. It 

would be easy to point out much greater defects 
than any yet mentioned, defects that go deeper 
than style. One or two indeed we are obliged to 
mention. There is the strain of coarseness often 
to be noted in his writing, showing itself now in an 
abusive epithet, now in a vulgar catch -word, now 
in a sally of humor bordering on the ribald. It is 
never grossly offensive, but it is none the less 
wounding to a delicate sensibility. Then there is 
the Philistine attitude,, which Mr. Arnold spent so 



INTRODUCTION 37 

much of his life in combating, the attitude of the 
complacent, self-satisfied Englishman, who sees in 
the British constitution and the organization of the 
British empire the best of all possible governments, 
and in the material and commercial progress of the 
age the best of all possible civilizations. And 
there is the persistent refusal to treat questions of 
really great moral significance upon any kind of 
moral basis. The absolute right or wrong of an 
act Macaulay will avoid discussing if he possibly 
can, and take refuge in questions of policy, of sheer 
profit and loss. We shall not blame him severely 
for even these serious shortcomings. On the first 
point we remember that he was deliberately play- 
ing to his audience, consciously writing down to 
the level of his public. On the second we realize 
that he was a practical politician and that he never 
could have been such with the idealism of a Car- 
lyle or a Ruskin. And on the third we remember 
that his own private life was one of affectionate 
sacrifice and his public life absolutely stainless. 
He could vote away his own income when moral 
conviction demanded it. Besides, even when 
he was only arguing, "policy" was always on the 
side of the right. What blame is left? Only 
this — that he should have pandered to any 
public, compromising his future fame for an 
ephemeral applause, and that he should have so far 
wronged the mass of his readers as to suppose that 
arguments based upon policy would be more 



38 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

acceptable to them than arguments based upon 
sound moral principles. That he was something of 
a Philistine and not wholly a "child of light," may 
be placed to his discount but not to his discredit. 
The total indictment is small and is mentioned 
here only in the interests of impartial criticism. 

It remains only to sum up the literary signifi- 
cance of Macaulay's work. Nearly all of that 
19. i^iterary work, WO must remember, lies 
Significance, outsidc of the field of what we 
know as "pure literature." Pure literature — 
poetry, drama, fiction — is a pure artistic or imagi- 
native product with entertainment as its chief aim. 
Though it may instruct incidentally, it does not 
merely inform. It is the work of creative genius. 
Macaulay's essays were meant to inform. Char- 
acters and situations are delineated in them, but 
■not created. History and criticism are often not 
literature at all. They become literature only 
by revealing an imaginative insight and clothing 
themselves in artistic form. Macaulay's essays 
have done this ; they engage the emotions as Avell 
as the intellect. They were meant for records, 
for storehouses of information ; but they are also 
works of art, and therefore they live intact while 
the records of equally industrious but less gifted 
historians are revised and replaced. Thus by their 
artistic quality, style in a word, they are removed 
from the shelves of history to the shelves of litera- 
ture. 



INTRODUCTION 39 

It becomes plain, perhaps, why at the outset we 
spoke of style. One hears little about Shaks- 
pere's style, or Scott's, or Shelley's. Where there 
are matters of larger interest — character, dra- 
matic situations, passion, lofty conceptions, 
abstract truth — there is little room for attention to 
so superficial a quality, or rather to a quality that 
has some such superficial aspects. But in the 
work of less creative writers, a purely literary inter- 
est, if it be aroused at all, must centre chiefly in 
this. And herein lies Macaulay's significance to 
the literary world to-day. 

Upon the professional writers of that world, 
as distinct from the readers, his influence has been 
30. Influence on HO Icss than profouud, partly for 
Journalism. gyji^ ^^^^^ chicfly, wc think (Mr. 
Morley notwithstanding), for good. His name 
was mentioned at the beginning of our sketch in 
connection with journalism. It is just because 
the literary development of our age has moved so 
rapidly along this line, that Macaulay's influence 
has been so far-reaching. The journalist must 
have an active pen. He cannot indulge in medi- 
tation while the ink dries. He cannot stop to 
arrange and rearrange *his ideas, to study the 
cadence of his sentences, to seek for the unique or 
the suggestive word. What Macaulay did was to 
furnish the model of just such a style as would 
meet this need — ready, easy, rapid, yet never loose 
or obscure. He seems to have found his way by 



40 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

instinct to all those expedients which make writing 
easy — short, direct sentences, commonjolace words, 
constant repetition and balance of form, adapted 
quotations, and stock phrases from the Bible or 
Prayer-Book or from the language of the profes- 
sions, politics, and trade. This style he impressed 
upon a generation of journalists that was ready to 
receive it and keenly alive to its value. 

The word journalist is scarcely broad enough to 
cover the class of writers here meant. For the 
class includes, in addition to the great "press 
tribe" from editor to reporter and reviewer, every 
writer of popular literature, every one who appeals 
to a miscellaneous public, who undertakes to 
make himself a medium between special intelli- 
gence and general intelligence. And there are 
thousands of these writers to-day — in editorial 
chairs, on magazine staffs, on political, educa- 
tional, and scientific commissions — who are con- 
sciously or unconsciously employing the convenient 
instrument which Macaulay did so much toward 
perfecting seventy-five years ago. The evidence 
is on every hand. One listens to a lecture by a 
scientist who, it is quite possible, never read a 
paragraph of Macaulay, and catches, before long, 
words like these: "There is no reversal of 
nature's processes. The world has come from a 
condition of things essentially different from the 
present. It is moving toward a condition of things 
essentially different from the present." Or one 



INTRODUCTION 41 

turns to an editorial in a daily paper and reads : 
"It will be ever thus with all the movements in 
this country to which a revolutionary interpreta- 
tion can be attached. The mass and body of the 
people of the United States are a level-headed, 
sober-minded people. They are an upright and a 
solvent people. They love their government. 
They are proud of their government. Its credit is 
dear to them. Enlisted in its cause, party lines 
sag loose upon the voters or disappear altogether 
from their contemjilation. " The ear-marks are 
very plain to see. 

We would not make the mistake of attributing 
too many and too large effects to a single cause. 
Life and art are very complex matters and the 
agencies at work are quite beyond our calculation. 
There is always danger of exaggerating the impor- 
tance of a single influence. The trend of things is 
not easily disturbed — the history of the world never 
yet turned upon the cast of a die or the length of d 
woman's nose. In spite of Jeffrey's testimony — and 
it cannot be lightly brushed aside — we are not ready 
to give Macaulay the whole credit for inventing this 
style. Xor do we believe that journalism would be 
materially different from what it is to-day, even 
though Macaulay had never written a line. But it 
does not seem too much to admit that the first 
vigorous impulse came from him and that the 
manner is deservedly associated with his name. 

In itself, as has been pointed out, it is not a 



42 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

beautiful thing. It is a thing of mannerisms, and 
these we have not hesitated to call vices. From 
the point of view of literature they are vices, 
blemishes on the face of true art. But the style 
is useful none the less. The ready writer is not 
concerned about beauty, he does not profess to be 
an artist. He has intelligence to convey, and the 
simplest and clearest medium is for his purpose the 
best. He will continue to use this serviceable 
medium nor trouble himself about its "unlovely 
staccato" and its gaudy tinsel. Meanwhile tha 
literary artist may pursue his way in search of a 
more elusive music and a more iridescent beauty, 
satisfied with the tithe of Macaulay's popularity if 
only he can attain to some measure of his own ideals. 

But Macaulay himself should be remembered for 
his real greatness. The facile imitator of the 

21. Real Great- tricks of his pen should beware 
ness. Qf ^jie ingratitude of assuming 

that these were the measure of his mind. These 
vices are virtues in their place, but they are not 
high virtues, and they are not the virtues that made 
Macaulay great. His greatness lay in the qualities 
that we have tried to insist upon from the first, 
qualities that are quite beyond imitation, the power 
of bringing instantly into one mental focus the accu- 
mulations of a prodigious memory, and the range of 
vision, the gi'asp of detail, and the insight into men, 
measures, and events^ that enabled him to reduce 
to beautiful order the chaos of human history. 



CHRONOLOGY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 



1800. Macaulay born, Oct. 25, at Rothley Temple, 

Leicestershire. 
1818. Entered Trinity College, Cambridge. (B. A., 

1822; M. A., 1825.) 

1823. Began contributing to Knighfs Quarterly Maga- 

zine. 

1824. Elected Fellow of Trinity. 

1825. Began contributing to Edinburgh Review. 

1826. Called to the Bar. 

1830. Entered Parliament. 

1831. Speeches on Reform Bill. 

1834. Went to India as member of the Supreme Coun 
cil. 

1837. Indian Penal Code. 

1838. Returned to England. Tour in Italy. 

1839. Elected to Parliament for Edinburgh. Secretary 

at War. 

1842. Lays of Ancient Rome. 

1843. Collected edition of Essays. 

1848. History of England, vols. i. and 11. (Vols. iii. 

and iv. 1855; vol. v. 1861.) 
1852. Failure in health. 
1857. Made Baron Macaulay of Rothley. 
1859. Died Dec. 28. (Interred in Westminster Abbey. ) 
The standard edition of Macaulay 's works is that 
edited by his sister, Lady Trevelyan, in eight volumes, 
and published at London, 1866 ; reprinted at New York, 
by Harper Bros. The authorized biography is that by his 
nephew, G. O. Trevelyan, a book which is exceedingly 
interesting and which takes high rank among English 
43 



44 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

biographies. J. Cotter Morison's life in the English 
Men of Letters series is briefer, is both biographical and 
critical, and is in every way an admirable work. There 
are also the articles in the Encyclopcedia Britannica, by 
Mark Pattison, and in the Dictionary of National 
Biography, by Mr. Leslie Stephen. The best critical 
essays are those by Mr. Leslie Stephen in Hours in a 
Library, by Mr. John Morley in Miscellanies, and by 
Walter Bagehot in Literary Studies 



MILTON 



Joannis Miltoni, Angli, de Doctrind Christiand libri 
duo posthumi. A treatise on Christian Doctrine, 
compiled from the Holy Scriptm-es alone. By John 
Milton, translated from the original by Charles R. 
Sumner, M.A., etc., etc., 1825. 

Towards the close of the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, 
deputy keeper of the state papers, in the course of 
his researches among the presses of his office, met 
with a large Latin manuscript. With it were 

5 found corrected copies of the foreign despatches 
written by Milton while he filled the office of 
Secretary, and several papers relating to the Popish 
Trials and the Eye-house Plot. The whole was 
wrapped up in an envelope, superscribed To Mr. 

10 Skinner, Merchant. On examination the large 
manuscript proved to be the long lost Essay on 
the Doctrines of Christianity, which, according 
to Wood and Toland, Milton finished after the 
Restoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skinner. 

15 Skinner, it is well known, held the same political 
opinions with his illustrious friend. It is therefore 
probable, as Mr. Lemon conjectures, that he may 
have fallen under the suspicions of the government 

45 



46 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

during that persecution of the Whigs which fol- 
lowed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, 
and that, in consequence of a general seizure of 
his papers, this work may have been brought to 
the office in which it has been found. But what- . 5 
ever the adventures of the manuscript may have 
been, no doubt can exist that it is a genuine relic 
of the great poet. 

Mr. Sumner, who was commanded by His 
Majesty to edit and translate the treatise, has 10 
acquitted himself of his task in a manner honor- 
able to his talents and to his character. His ver- 
sion is not, indeed, very easy or elegant ; but it is 
entitled to the praise of clearness and fidelity. 
His notes abound with interesting quotations, and 15 
have the rare merit of really elucidating the text. 
The preface is evidently the work of a sensible 
and candid man, firm in his own religious opin- 
ions, and tolerant towards those of others. 

The book itself will not add much to the fame 20 
of Milton. It is, like all his Latin works, well 
written, though not exactly in the style of the 
prize essays of Oxford and Cambridge. There is 
no elaborate imitation of classical antiquity, no 
scrupulous purity, none of the ceremonial clean- 25 
ness which characterizes the diction of our academ- 
ical Pharisees. The author does not attempt to 
polish and brighten his composition into the 
Ciceronian, gloss and brilliancy. He does not, in 
short, sacrifice sense and spirit to pedantic 30 



MILTON 47 

refinements. The nature of his subject compelled 
him to use many words 

"That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp." 
But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if 

5 Latin were his mother tongue; and, where he is 
least happy, his failure seems to arise from tlie 
carelessness of a native, not from the ignorance of 
a foreigner. We may apply to him what Denham 
with great felicity says of Cowley. He wears the 

10 garb, but not the clothes, of the ancients. 

Throughout the volume are discernible the 
traces of a powerful and independent mind, 
emancipated from the influence of authority, and 
devoted to the search of truth. Milton professes 

15 to form his system from the Bible alone; and his 
digest of scriptural texts is certainly among the 
best that have appeared. But he is not always so 
happy in his inferences as in his citations. 

Some of the heterodox doctrines which he avows 

20 seem to have excited considerable amazement, 
particularly his Arianism>^and his theory on the 
subject of polygamy. Yet we can scarcely conceive 
that any person could have read the Paradise Lost 
without suspecting him of the former ; nor do we 

25 think that any reader, acquainted with the history 
of his life, ought to be much startled at the latter. 
The opinions which he has expressed respecting 
the nature of the Deity, the eternity of matter, 
and the observation of the Sabbath, might, we 

30 think, have caused more just surprise. 



48 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

But we will not go into the discussion of these 
points. The book, were it far more orthodox or 
far more heretical than it is, would not much edify 
or corrupt the present generation. The men of 
our time are not to be converted or perverted by 5 
quartos. A few more days, and this essay will 
follow the Defensio Pojnili to the dust and silence 
of the upper shelf. The name of its author, and 
the remarkable circumstances attending its publi- 
cation, will secure to it a certain degree of atten- 10 
tion. For a month or two it will occupy a few 
minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a few 
columns in every magazine; and it will then, to 
borrow the elegant language of the playbills, be 
withdrawn, to make room for the forthcoming 15 
novelties. 

We wish, however, to avail ourselves of the 
interest, transient as it may be, which this work 
has excited. The dexterous Capuchins never 
choose to preach on the life and miracles of a saint 20 
till they have awakened the devotional feelings of 
their auditors by exhibiting some relic of him, a 
thread of his garment, a lock of his hair, or a drop 
of his blood. On the same principle, we intend to 
take advantage of the late interesting discovery, 25 
and, while this memorial of a great and good man 
is still in the hands of all, to say something of his 
moral and intellectual qualities. Nor, we are con- 
vinced, will the severest of our readers blame us if, 
on an occasion like the present, we turn for a 30 



MILTON 49 

short time from the topics of the day, to com- 
memorate, in all love and reverence, the genius and 
virtues of John Milton, the poet, the statesman, 
the philosopher, the glory of English literature, 
the champion and the martyr of English liberty. 
It is by his poetry that Milton is best known; 
id it is of his poetry that we wish first to speak. 
By the general suffrage of the civilized world, his 
place has been assigned among the greatest masters 

10 of the art. His detractors, however, though out- 
voted, have not been silenced. There are many 
critics, and some of great name, who contrive in 
the same breath to extol the poems and to decry 
the poet. The works they acknowledge, consid- 

15 ered in themselves, may be classed among the 
noblest productions of the human mind. But 
they will not allow the author to rank with those 
great men who, born in the infancy of civiliza- 
tion, supplied, by their own powers, the want of 

20 instruction, and, though destitute of models them- 
selves, bequeathed to posterity models which defy 
imitation. Milton, it is said, inherited what his 
predecessors created; he lived in an enlightened 
age; he received a finished education; and we 

25 must, therefore, if we would form a just estimate 
of his powers, make large deductions in consider- 
ation of these advantages. 

We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical 
as the remark may appear, that no poet has evei 

30 had to struggle with more unfavorable circum- 



50 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

stances than Milton. He doubted, as he has him- 
self owned, whether he had not been born "an age 
too late." For this notion Johnson has thought 
fit to make him the butt of much clumsy ridicule. 
The poet, we believe, understood the nature of his 5 
art better than the critic. He knew that his poet- 
ical genius derived no advantage from the civiliza- 
tion which surrounded him, or from the learning 
which he had acquired ; and he looked back with 
something like regret to the ruder age of simple 10 
words and vivid impressions. 

We think that, as civilization advances, poetry 
almost necessarily declines. Therefore, though we 
fervently admire those great works of imagination 
Vv'hich have appeared in dark ages, we do not 15 
admire them the more because they have appeared 
in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold that the 
most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a 
great poem produced in a civilized age. We can- 
not understand why those who believe in that most 20 
orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest 
poets are generally the best, should wonder at the 
rule as if it were the exception. Surely the uni- 
formity of the phenomenon indicates a correspond- 
ing uniformity in the cause. 25 

The fact is, that common observers reason from 
the progi^ess of the experimental sciences to that of 
the imitative arts. The improvement of the former 
is gradual and slow. Ages are spent in collecting 
materials, ages more in separating and combining 30 



MILTON 51 

them. Even when a system has been formed, 
there is still something to add, to alter, or to 
reject. Every generation enjoys the use of a vast 
hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits 

5 that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to 
future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first 
speculators lie under great disadvantages, and, 
even when they fail, are entitled to praise. Their 
pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speed- 

10 ily surpass them in actual attainments. Every 
girl who has read Mrs. Marcet's little dialogues on 
Political Economy could teach Montague or Wal- 
pole many lessons in finance. Any intelligent man 
may now, by resolutely applying himself for a few 

15 years to mathematics, learn more than the great 
Newton knew after half a century of study and 
meditation. 

But it is not thus with music, with painting, or 
with sculpture. Still less is it thus with poetry. 

20 The progress of refinement rarely supplies these 
arts with better objects of imitation. It may 
indeed improve the instruments which are neces- 
sary to the mechanical operations of the musician, 
the sculptor, and the painter. But language, the 

25 machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose 
in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals^ 
first perceive and then abstract. They advance 
from particular images to general terms. Hence 
the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philo- 

30 sophical, that of a half -civilized people is poetical. 



52 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

This change in the language of men is partly the 
cause and partly the effect of a corresponding 
change in the nature of their intellectual oper- 
ations, of a change hy which science gains and 
poetry loses. Generalization is necessary to the 5 
advancement of knowledge; but particularity is 
indispensable to the creations of the imagination. 
In proportion as men know more and think more, 
they look less at individuals and more at classes. 
They therefore make better theories and worse lo 
poems. They give us vague phrases instead of 
images, and personified qualities instead of men. 
They may be better able to analyze human nature 
than their predecessors. But analysis is not the 
business of the poet. His office is to portray, not is 
to dissect. He may believe in a moral sense, like 
Shaftesbury ; he may refer all human actions to 
self-interest, like Helvetius; or he may never 
think about the matter at all. His creed on such 
subjects will no more influence his poetry, properly 20 
so called, than the notions which a painter may 
have conceived respecting the lachrymal glands, or 
the circulation of the blood, will affect the tears of 
his Niobe, or the blushes of his Aurora. If 
Shakespeare had written a book on the motives of 25 
human actions, it is by no means certain that it 
would have been a good one. It is extremely 
improbable that it would have contained half so 
much able reasoning on the subject as is to be 
found in the Fable of the Bees. But could 30 



MILTON 53 

Mandeville have created an lago? Well as he 
knew how to resolve characters into then' elements, 
would he have been able to combine those elements 
in such a manner as to make up a man, a real, 

5 living, individual man? 

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even 
enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of 
mind, if anything which gives so much pleasure 
ought to be called unsoundness. By poetry we 

10 mean not all writing in verse, nor even all good 
"writing in verse. Our definition excludes many 
metrical compositions which, on other grounds, 
deserve the highest praise. By poetry we mean 
the art of employing words in such a manner 

15 as to produce an illusion on the imagination, the 
art of doing by means of words what the painter 
does by means of colors. Thus the greatest of 
poets has described it, in lines universally admired 
for the vigor and felicity of their diction, and still 

20 more valuable on account of the just notion which 
they convey of the art in which he excelled : — 

"As imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
25 A local habitation and a name. " 

These are the fruits of the "fine frenzy" which 
he ascribes to the poet, — a fine frenzy, doubtless, 
but still a frenzy. Truth, indeed, is essential to 
poetry; but it is the truth of madness. The 



54 MACAULAYS ESSAYS 

reasonings are just; but the premises are false. 
After the first suppositions have been made, every- 
thing ought to be consistent ; but those first sup- 
positions require a degree of credulity which almost 
amounts to a partial and temporary derangement 5 
of the intellect. Hence of all people children are 
the most imaginative. They abandon themselves 
without reserve to every illusion. Every image 
which is strongly presented to their mental eye 
produces on them the effect of reality. No man, lo 
whatever his sensibility may be, is ever affected by 
Hamlet or Lear, as a little girl is affected by the 
story of poor Ked Riding-hood. She knows that it 
is all false, that wolves cannot speak, that there are 
no wolves in England. Yet in spite of her knowl- 15 
edge she believes; she weeps; she trembles; she 
dares not go into a dark room lest she should feel 
the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such is 
the despotism of the imagination over urlculti- 
vated minds. 20 

In a rude state of society men are children with 
a greater variety of ideas. It is therefore in such 
a state of society that we may expect to find the 
poetical temperament in its highest perfection. In 
an enlightened age there will be much intelligence, 25 
much science, much philosophy, abundance of just 
classification and subtle analysis, abundance of wit 
and eloquence, abundance of verses, and even of 
good ones; but little poetry. Men will judge and 
compare; but they will not create. They will 30 



MILTON 65 

talk about the old poets, and comment on them, 
and to a certain degree enjoy them. But they will 
scarcely be able to conceive the effect which 
poetry produced on their ruder ancestors, the 

5 agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief. The 
Greek Rhapsodists, according to Plato, could scarce 
recite Homer without falling into convulsions. 
The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping-knife while 
he shouts his death-song. The power which the 

10 ancient bards of Wales and Germany exercised 
over their auditors seems to modern readers almost 
miraculous. Such feelings are very rare in a civil- 
ized community, and most rare among those who 
participate most in its improvements. They 

15 linger longest among the peasantry. 

Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the 
mind, as a magic lantern produces an illusion on 
the eye of the body. And, as the magic lantern 
acts' best in a dark room, poetry effects its purpose 

20 most completely in a dark age. As the light of 
knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions, as the 
outlines of certainty become more and more defi- 
nite, and the shades of probability more and more 
distinct, the hues and lineaments of the phan- 

25 toms which the poet calls up grow fainter and 
fainter. We cannot unite the incompatible ad- 
vantages of reality and deception, the clear dis- 
cernment of truth and the exquisite enjoyment of 
fiction. 

30 He who, in an enlightened and literary society, 



56 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

aspires to be a great poet, must first become a 
little child. He must take to pieces the whole 
web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that 
knowledge which has perhaps constituted hitherto 
his chief title to superiority. His very talents will 5 
be a hindrance to him. His difficulties will be 
proportioned to his proficiency in the pursuits 
which are fashionable among his contemporaries; 
and that proficiency will in general be proportioned 
to the vigor and activity of his mind. And it is lo 
well if, after air his sacrifices and exertions, his 
works do not resemble a lisi^ing man or a modern 
ruin. We have seen in our own time great 
talents, intense labor, and long meditation, em- 
ployed in this struggle against the spirit of is 
the age, and employed, we will not say absolutely 
in vain, but with dubious success and feeble 
applause. 

If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever 
triumphed over greater difficulties than Milton. 20 
He received a learned education : he was a pro- 
found and elegant classical scholar ; he had studied 
all the mysteries of Eabbinical literature ; he was 
intimately acquainted with every language of mod- 
ern Europe from which either pleasure or infer- 25 
mation was then to be derived. He was perhaps 
the only great poet of later times who has been 
distinguished by the excellence of his Latin verse. 
The genius of Petrarch was scarcely of the first 
order; and his poems in the ancient language, 30 



MILTON 57 

though much praised by those who have never read 
them, are wretched compositions. Cowley, with 
all his admirable wit and ingenuity, had little 
imagination ; nor indeed do we think his classical 

5 diction comparable to that of Milton. The author- 
ity of Johnson is against us on this point. But 
Johnson had studied the bad writers of the middle 
ages till he had become utterly insensible to the 
Augustan elegance, and was as ill qualified to 

10 judge between two Latin styles as a habitual 
drunkard to set up for a wine-taster. 

Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a 
far-fetched, costly, sickly imitation of that which 
elsewhere may be found in healthful and sponta- 

15 neous perfection. The soils on which this rarity 
flourishes are in general as ill-suited to the pro- 
duction of vigorous native poetry as the flower- 
pots of a hot-house to the growth of oaks. That 
the author of the Paradise Lost should have 

20 written the Epistle to Manso was truly wonderful. 
Never before were such marked originality and 
such exquisite mimicry found together. Indeed, in 
all the Latin poems of Milton the artificial manner 
indispensable to such works is admirably preserved, 

25 while, at the same time, his genius gives to them a 
peculiar charm, an air of nobleness and freedom, 
which distinguishes them from all other writings of 
the same class. They remind us of the amuse- 
ments of those angelic warriors who composed the 

30 cohort of Gabriel: — 



58 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

"About him exercised heroic games 
The unarmed youth of heaven. But o'er their heads 
Celestial armory, shield, helm, and spear. 
Hung high, with diamond flaming and with gold." 

We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for 5 
which the genius of Milton ungirds itself, without 
catching a glimpse of the gorgeous and terrible 
panoply which it is accustomed to wear. The 
strength of his imagination triumphed over every 
obstacle. So intense and ardent was the fire of lo 
his mind, that it not only was not suifocated 
beneath the weight of fuel, but penetrated the 
whole superincumbent mass with its own heat and 
radiance. 

It is not our intention to attempt anything like is 
a complete examination of the poetry of Milton. 
The public has long been agreed as to the merit 
of the most remarkable passages, the incomparable 
harmony of the numbers, and the excellence of 
that style which no rival has been able to equal and 20 
no parodist to degrade, which displays in their 
highest perfection the idiomatic powers of the 
English tongue, and to which every ancient and 
every modern language has contributed something 
of grace, of energy, or of music. In the vast field 25 
of criticism on which we are entering, innumerable 
reapers have already put their sickles. Yet the 
harvest is so abundant that the negligent search of 
a straggling gleaner may be rewarded with a slieaf . 

The most striking characteristic of the poetry of 30 



, MILTON 59 

Milton is the extreme remoteness of the associ- 
ations by means of which it acts on the reader. 
Its effect' is produced, not so much by what it 
expresses, as by what it suggests; not so much by 

5 the ideas which it directly conveys, as by other 
ideas which are connected with them. He electri- 
fies the mind through conductors. The most 
unimaginative man must understand the Iliad. 
Homer gives him no choice, and requires from him 

10 no exertion, but takes the whole upon himself, and 
sets the images in so clear a light that it is impos- 
sible to be blind to them. The works of Milton 
cannot be comprehended or enjoyed unless the 
mind of the reader cooperate with that of the 

15 writer. He does not paint a finished picture, or 
play for a mere passive listener. He sketches, and 
leaves others to fill up the outline. He strikes ihe 
key-note, and expects his hearer to make out the 
melody. 

20 We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. 
The expression in general means nothing; but, 
applied to the writings of Milton, it is most appro- 
priate. His poetry acts like an incantation. Its 
merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its 

25 occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to 
be no more in his words than in other words. But 
they are words of enchantment. No sooner are 
they pronounced, than the past is present and the 
distant near. New forms of beauty start at once 

30 into existence,, and all the burial-places of the 



60 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS • 

memory give up their dead. Change tlie structure 
of the sentence, substitute one synonym for 
another, and the whole effect is destroyed. The 
spell loses its power ; and he who should then hope 
to conjure with it would find himself as much 5 
mistaken as Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he 
stood crying, "Open Wheat," "Open Barley," to 
the door which obeyed no sound but "Open 
Sesame." The miserable failure of Dryden in his 
attempt to translate into his own diction some lo 
parts of the Paradise Lost, is a remarkable instance 
of this. 

In support of these observations we may remark, 
that scarcely any passages in the poems of Milton 
are more generally known, or more frequently i5 
repeated, than those which are little more than 
muster-rolls of names. They are not always more 
appropriate or more melodious than other names. 
But they are charmed names. Every one of them is 
the first link in a long chain of associated ideas. 20 
Like the dwelling-place of our infancy revisited in 
manhood, like the song of our country heard in a 
strange land, they produce upon us an effect 
wholly independent of their intrinsic value. One . 
transports us back to a remote period of history. 25 
Another places us among the novel scenes and 
manners of a distant region. A third evokes all 
the dear classical recollections of childhood, the 
school-room, the dog-eared A^irgil, the holiday, and 
the prize. A fourth brings before us the splendid 30 



MILTON 61 . 

phantoms of cliivalroiis romance, the trophied lists, 
tiie embroidered housings, the qnaint devices, the 
haunted forests, the enchanted gardens, the 
achievements of enamoured knights, and the 

'i smiles of rescued princesses. 

In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar 
manner more happily displayed than in the Allegro 
and the Penseroso. It is impossible to conceive 
that the mechanism of language can be brought to 

10 a more exquisite degree of perfection. These 
poems differ from others as atar of roses differs 
from ordinary rose-water, the close-packed essence 
from the thin, diluted mixture. They are indeed 
not so much poems as collections of hints, from 

15 each of which the reader is to make out a poem 

for himself. Every epithet is a text for a stanza. 

The Oomus and the Samson Agonistes are works 

which, though of very different merit, offer some 

marked points of resemblance. Both are lyric 

20 23oems in the form of plays. There are perhaps no 
two kinds of composition so essentially dissimilar 
as the drama and the ode. The business of the 
dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and to 
let nothing appear but his characters. As soon as 

25 he attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illu- 
sion is broken. The effect is as unpleasant as that 
which is produced on the stage by the voice of 
a prompter or the entrance of a scene-shifter. 
Hence it was that the tragedies of Byron were his 

30 least successful performances. They resemble 



S2 .tfACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

those pasteboard pictures invented by the friend of 
childi'en, Mr. Newbery, in which a single movable 
head goes round twenty different bodies, so that 
the same face looks out upon us, successively, 
from the uniform of a hussar, the furs of a judge, 8 
and the rags of a beggar. In all the characters, 
patriots and tyrants, haters and lovers, the frown 
and sneer of Harold were discernible in an instant. 
But this species of egotism, though fatal to the 
drama, is the inspiration of the ode. It is the lo 
part of the lyric poet to abandon himself, without 
reserve, to his own emotions. 

Between these hostile elements many great men 
have endeavored to effect an amalgamation, but 
never with complete success. The Greek Drama, is 
on the model of which the Samson was written, 
sprang from the Ode. The dialogue was ingi'afted 
on the chorus, and naturally partook of its char- 
acter. The genius of the greatest of the Athenian 
dramatists cooperated with the cu'cumstances 20 
under which tragedy made its first appearance, 
^schylus was, head and heart, a lyric poet. In 
his time the Greeks had far more intercourse with 
the East than in the days of Homer ; and they had 
not yet acquired that immense superiority in war, 25 
in science, and in the arts, which, in the follow- 
ing generation, led them, to treat the Asiatics with 
contempt. From the narrative of Herodotus it 
should seem that they still looked up, with the 
veneration of disciples, to Egypt and Assyria. At 30 



MILTON 63 

this period, accordingly, it was natural that the 
literature of Greece should be tinctured with the 
Oriental style. And that style, we think, is dis- 
cernible in the works of Pindar and ^schylus. 
5 The latter often reminds us of the Hebrew writers. 
The book of Job, indeed, in conduct and diction, 
bears a considerable resemblance to some of his 
dramas. Considered as plays, his works are 
absurd; considered as choruses, they are above all 

10 praise. If, for instance, we examine the address 
of Clytemnestra to Agamemnon on his return, or 
the description of the seven Argive chiefs, by the 
principles of dramatic writing, we shall instantly 
condemn them as monstrous. But if we forget the 

15 characters, and think only of the poetry, we shall 
admit that it has never been surpassed in energy 
and magnificence. Sophocles made the Greek 
drama as dramatic as was consistent with its 
original form. His portraits of men have a sort of 

20 similarity ; but it is the similarity not of a paint- 
ing, but of a bas-relief. It suggests a resem- 
blance; but it does not produce an illusion. 
Euripides attempted to carry the reform further. 
But it was a task far beyond his powers, perhaps 

25 beyond any powers. Instead of correcting what 
was bad, he destroyed .what was excellent. He 
substituted crutches for stilts, bad sermons for 
good odes. 

Milton, it is well known, admired Euripide-^ 

30 highly; much more highly than, in our opinion. 



64 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

Euripides deserved. Indeed, the caresses which 
this partiality leads our countryman to bestow on 
*'sad Electra's poet," sometimes remind us of the 
beautiful Queen of Fairyland kissing the long ears 
of Bottom. At all events, there can be no doubt 5 
that this veneration for the Athenian, whether 
just or not, was injurious to the Samson Agonistes. 
Had Milton taken ^schylus for his model, he 
would have given himself up to the lyric inspir- 
ation, and poured out profusely all the treasures of lo 
his mind, without bestowing a thought on those 
dramatic proprieties which the nature of the work 
rendered it impossible to preserve. In the attempt 
to reconcile things in their own nature inconsist-' 
ent, he has failed, as every one else must have is 
failed. We cannot identify ourselves with the 
characters, as in a good play. We cannot identify 
ourselves with the poet, as in a good ode. The 
conflicting ingredients, like an acid and an alkali 
mixed, neutralize each other. We are by no means 2C 
insensible to the merits of this celebrated piece, to 
the severe dignity of the style, the graceful and 
pathetic solemnity of the opening S23eech, or the 
wild and barbaric melody which gives so striking 
an effect to the choral passages. But we think it, 25 
we confess, the least successful effort of the 
genius of Milton. 

The Comus is framed on the model of the 
Italian Masque, as the Samson is framed on the 
model of the Greek Tragedy. It is certainly the 30 



MILTON 65 

noblest performance of the kind which exists in 
any language. It is as far superior to the Faith- 
ful Shepherdess, as the Faithful Shepherdess is to 
the Aminta or the Aminta to the Pastor Fido. 

5 It was well for Milton that he had here no 
Euripides to mislead him. He understood and 
loved the literature of modern Italy. But 
he did not feel for it the same veneration which 
he entertained for the remains of Athenian 

10 and Koman poetry, consecrated by so many lofty 
and endearing recollections. The faults, more- 
over, of his Italian predecessors were of a kind to 
which his mind had a deadly antipathy. He could 
stoop to a plain style, sometimes even to a bald 

15 style; but false brilliancy was his utter aversion. 
His Muse had no objection to a russet attire ; but 
she turned with disgust from the finery of Guarini, 
as tawdry and as paltry as the rags 9f a chimney- 
sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she 

20 wears are of massive gold, not only dazzling to the 
sight, but capable of standing the severest test of 
the crucible. 

Milton attended in the Comus to the distinction 
which he afterwards neglected in the Samson. He 

25 made his Masque what it ought to be, essentially 
lyrical, and dramatic only in semblance. He has 
not attempted a fruitless struggle against a defect 
inherent in the nature of that species of compo- 
sition; and he has therefore succeeded, wherever 

jO success was not impossible. The speeches must be 



^Q MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

read as majestic soliloquies ; and tie who so reads 
them will be enraptured with their eloquence, their 
sublimity, and their music. The interruptions 
of the dialogue, however, impose a constraint 
upon the writer, and break the illusion of the 
reader. The finest passages are those which are 
lyric in form as well as in spirit. "I should much 
commend," says the excellent Sir Henry Wotton 
in a letter to Milton, "the tragical part, if the 
lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Dorique 
delicacy in your songs and odes, whereunto, I must 
plainly confess to you, I have seen yet nothing 
parallel in our language." The criticism was 
just. It is when Milton escapes from the shackles 
of the dialogue, when he is discharged from the 
labor of uniting two incongruous styles, when he is 
at liberty to indulge his choral raptures without 
reserve, that he rises even above himself. Then, 
like his own good Gfenius bursting from the earthly 
form and weeds of Thyrsis, he stands forth in ao 
celestial freedom and beauty; he seems to cry 
exaltingly, 

"Now my task is smoothly done, 
I can fly, or I can run," 

CO skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to 
bathe in the Elysian dew of the rainbow, and to 
inhale the balmy smells of nard and cassia, which 
the mus!ky wings of the zephyi' scatter through the 
cedared aJleys of the Hesperides 



MILTON * 67 

There are several of the minor poems of Milton 
on Tvhich we would willingly make a few remarks. 
Still more willingly would we enter into a detailed 
examination of that admirable poem, the Paradise 
Eegained, which, strangely enough, is scarcely ever 
mentioned except as an instance of the blindness 
pf the parental affection which men of letters bear 
towards the offs|)ring of their intellects » That 
Milton was mistaken in preferring this work, excel- 
lent as it is, to the Paradise Lost, we readily 
admit. But we are sure that the superiority of 
the Paradise Lost to the Paradise Eegained is 
not more decided than the superiority of the 
Paradise Eegained to every poem which has sitice 
made its appearance. Our limits, however, pre- 
vent us from discussing the point at length. We 
hasten on to that extraordinary production which 
the general suffrage of critics has placed in the 
highest class of human compositions. 

The only poem of modern times which can be 
compared with the Paradise Lost is the Divine 
Comedy. The subject of Milton, in some points, 
resembled that of Dante; but he has treated it in 
a widely different manner. We cannot, we think, 
better illustrate our opinion respecting our own 
gi'eat poet, than by contrasting him with the 
father of Tuscan literature. 

The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante 
as the hieroglyphics of Egypt differed from the 
picture-writing of Mexico. The images which 



68 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

Dante employs speak for themselves; they stand 
simply for what they are. Those of Milton have a 
signification which is often discernible only to the 
initiated. Their value depends less on what they 
directly represent than on what they remotely sug- 
gest. However strange, however grotesque, may 
be the appearance which Dante undertakes to 
describe, he never shrinks from describing it. He 
gives us the shape, the color, the sound, the smell, 
the taste; he counts the numbers; he measures the 
size. His similes are the illustrations of a travel- 
ler. Unlike those of other poets, and especially of 
Milton, they are introduced in a plain, business- 
like manner ; not for the sake of any beauty in the 
objects from which they are drawn; not for the 
sake of any ornament which they may impart to 
the poem ; but simply in order to make the mean- 
ing of the writer as clear to the reader as it is to 
himself. The ruins of the precipice which led 
from the sixth to the seventh circle of hell were 
like those of the rock which fell into the Adige on 
the south of Trent. The cataract of Phlegethon 
was like that of Aqua Cheta at the monastery of 
St. Benedict. The place where the heretics were 
confined in burnin-g tombs resembled the vast 
cemetery of Aries. 

Now let us compare with the exact details of 
Dante the dim intimations of Milton. We will 
cite a few examples- The English poet has never 
thought of taking the measure of Satan. He gives 



MILTON ' 69 

us merely a vague idea of vast bulk. In one pas- 
sage the fiend lies stretched out, huge in length, 
floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth- 
born enemies of Jove, or to the sea-monster which 

5 the mariner mistakes for an island. When he 
addresses himself to battle against the guardian 
angels, he stands like Teneriffe or Atlas: his 
stature reaches the sky. Contrast with these de- 
scriptions the lines in which Dante has described 

10 the gigantic spectre of Nimrod. "His face seemed 
to me as long and as broad as the ball of St. 
Peter's at Eome; and his other limbs were in pro- 
portion; so that the bank, which concealed him 
from the waist downwards, nevertheless showed so 

15 much of him, that three tall Germans would in 
vain have attempted to reach to his hair." We 
are sensible that we do no justice to the admirable 
style of the Florentine poet. But Mr. Gary's 
translation is not at hand; and our version, how- 

20 ever rude, is sufficient to illustrate our meaning. 

Gnce more, compare the lazar-house in the 

eleventh book of the Paradise Lost with the last 

ward of Malebolge in Dante. Milton avoids the 

loathsome details, and takes refuge in indistinct 

25 but solemn and tremendous imagery: Despair 
hurrying from couch to couch to mock the 
wretches with his attendance; Death shaking his 
dart over them, but, in spite of supplications, 
delaying to strike. What says Dante? "There 

80 was such a moan there as there would be if all the 



70 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

sick who, between July and September, are in the 
hospitals of Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan 
swamps, and of Sardinia, were in one pit together; 
and such a stench was issuing forth as is wont to 
issue from decayed limbs." s 

^Ye will not take upon ourselves the invidious 
office of settling precedency between two such 
writers. Each in his own department is incom- 
parable; and each, we may remark, has wisely, or 
fortunately, taken a subject adapted to exhibit his lo 
peculiar talent to the gi'eatest advantage. The 
Divine Comedy is a personal narrative. Dante is 
the eye-witness and ear-witness of that which he 
relates. He is the very man who has heard the 
tormented spirits crying out for the second death ; is 
who has read the dusky characters on the portal 
w^ithin which there is no hope ; who has hidden 
his face from the terrors of the Gorgon ; who has 
fled from the hooks and the seething pitch of 
Barbariccia and. Draghignazzo. His own hands 20 
have grasped the shaggy sides of Lucifer. His 
own feet have climbed the mountain of expi- 
ation. His own brow has been marked by the 
purifying angel. The reader would throw aside 
such a tale in incredulous disgust, unless it were 25 
told, with the strongest air of veracity, with a 
sobriety even in its horrors, with the greatest pre- 
cision and multiplicity in its details. The narra- 
tive of Milton in this respect differs from that of 
Dante, as the adventures of Amadis differ from so 



MILTON 71 

those of Gulliver. The author of Amadis would 
have made his book ridiculous if he had intro- 

' duced those minute particulars which give such a 
charm to the work of Swift : the nautical observa- 
5 tions, the affected delicacy about names, the 
official documents transcribed at full length, and 
all the unmeaning gossip and scandal of the court, 
springing out of nothing, and tending to nothing. 
AVe are not shocked at being told that a man who 

io lived, nobody knows when, saw many very strange 
sights, and we can easily abandon ourselves to the 
illusion of the romance. But when Lemuel 
Gulliver, surgeon, resident at Rotherhithe, tells us 
of pygmies and giants, flying islands, and philoso- 

15 phizing horses, nothing but such circumstantial 
touches could produce for a single moment a 
deception on the imagination. 

Of all the poets who have introduced into their 
works the agency of supernatural beings, Milton 

20 has succeeded best. Here Dante decidedly yields 
to him; and as this is a point on which many 
rash and ill-considered judgments have been pro- 
nounced, we feel inclined to dwell on it a little 
longer. The most fatal error which a poet can 

25 possibly commit in the management of his machin- 
ery, is that of attempting to- philosophize too 
much. Milton has been often censured for ascrib- 
ing to spirits many functions of which spirits 
must be incapable. But these objections, though 

80 sanctioned by eminent names, originate, we ven- 



72 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

ture to say, in profound ignorance of the art of 
poetry. 

"What is spirit? What are our own minds, the 
portion of spirit with which we are best acquainted? 
We observe certain phenomena. We cannot a 
explain them into material causes. We therefore 
infer that there exists something which is not 
material. But of this something we have no idea. 
We can define it only by negatives. We can 
reason about it only by symbols. We use the lo 
word; but we have no image of the thing; and the 
business of poetry is with images, and not with 
words. The poet uses words indeed; but they are 
merely the instruments of his art, not its objects. 
They are the materials which he is to dispose in is 
such a manner as to present a picture to the mental 
eye. And if they are not so disposed, they are no 
more entitled to be called poetry than a bale of 
canvas and a box of colors to be called a painting. 

Logicians may reason about abstrt. ions. But 20 
the great mass of men must have images. The 
strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and 
nations to idolatry can be explained on no other 
principle. The first inhabitants of Greece, there 
is reason to believe, worshipped one invisible 23 
Deity. But the necessity of having something 
more definite to adore produced, in a few centu- 
ries, the innumerable crowd of gods and god- 
desses. In like manner the ancient Persians 
thought it impious to ejfhibit the Creator under a 30 



MILTON . 73 

hnman form. Yet even these transferred to the 
Sun the worship which, in speculation, they con- 
sidered due only to the Supreme Mind. The his- 
tory of the Jews is the record of a continued 

5 struggle between pure Theism, supported by the 
most terrible sanctions, and the strangely fascinat- 
ing desire of having some visible and tangible 
object of adoration. Perhaps none of the second- 
ary causes which Gibbon has assigned for the 

lb rapidity with which Christianity spread over the 
world, while Judaism scarcely ever acquired a 
proselyte, operated more powerfully than this feel- 
ing. God, the uncreated, the incomprehensible, 
the invisible, attracted few worshippers. A philos- 

15 opher might admire so noble a conception; but 
the crowd turned away in disgust from words 
which presented no image to their minds. It was 
before Deity, embodied in a human form, walking 
among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning 

■io on their bosoms-, weeping over their graves, slum- 
bering in the manger, bleeding on the cross, that 
the prejudices of the Synagogue, and the doubts 
of the Academy, and the pride of the Portico, and 
the fasces of the Lictor, and the swords of thirty 

-!j legions, were humbled in the dust. Soon after 
Christianity had achieved its triumph, the prin- 
ciple which had assisted it began to corrupt it. It 
became a new Paganism. Patron saints assumed 
the offices of household gods. St. George took 

30 the place of Mars. St. Elmo consoled the 



74 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

mariner for the loss of Castor and Pollux. 
The Virgin Mother and Cecilia succeeded to 
Venus and the Muses. The fascination of 
sex and loveliness was again joined to that 
of celestial dignity; and the homage of 
chivalry was blended with that of religion. 
Reformers have often made a stand against these 
feelings; but never with more than apparent and 
partial success. The men who demolished the 
images in cathedrals have not always been able to 
demolish those which were enshrined in their 
minds. It would not be difficult to show that in 
politics the same rule holds good. Doctrines, we 
are afraid, must generally be embodied before they 
can excite a strong public feeling. The multitude 
is more easily interested for the most unmeaning 
badge, or the most insignificant name, than for the 
most important principle. 

From these considerations, we infer that no poet 
who should affect that metaphysical accuracy for 
the want of which Milton has been blamed, would 
escape a disgraceful failure. Still, however, there 
was another extreme which, though far less dan- 
gerous, was also to be avoided. The imaginations 
of men are in a great measure under the control of 
their opinions. The most exquisite art of poetical 
coloring can produce no illusion when it is em- 
ployed to represent that which is at once perceived 
to be incongruous and absurd. Milton wrote in 
an age of philosophers and theologians. It was 



MILTON 75 

necessary, therefore, for him to abstain from giv- 
ing such a shock to their understandings as might 
break the charm which it was his object to throw 
over their imaginations. This is the real expla- 

5 nation of the indistinctness and inconsistency with 
which he has often been reproached. Dr. John- 
son acknowledges that it was absolutely necessary 
that the spirits should be clothed with material 
forms. "But," says he, "the poet should have 

10 secured the consistency of his system by keeping 
immateriality out of sight, and seducing the reader 
to drop it from his thoughts." This is easily 
said; but what if Milton could not seduce his 
readers to drop immateriality from their thoughts? 

15 What if the contrary opinion had taken so full a 
possession of the minds of men as to leave no 
room even for the half-belief which poetry 
requires? Such we suspect to have been the case. 
It was impossible for the poet to adopt altogether 

80 the material or the immaterial system. He there- 
fore took his stand on the debatable ground. He 
left the whole in ambiguity. He has doubtless, 
by so doing, laid himself open to the charge of 
inconsistency. But, though philosophically in the 

85 wrong, we cannot but believe that he was poetic- 
ally in the right. This task, which almost any 
other writer would have found impracticable, was 
easy to him. The peculiar art which he pos- 
sessed of communicating his meaning circuitously 

30 through a long succession of associated ideas, and 



76 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

of intimating more than he expressed, enabled him 
to disguise those incongruities which he could not 
avoid. 

Poetry which relates to the beings of another 
world ought to be at once mysterious and pictur- 5 
esque. That of Milton is so. That of Dante is 
picturesque indeed beyond any that ever was 
written. Its effect approaches to that produced by 
the pencil or the chisel. But it is picturesque to 
the exclusion of all mystery. This is a fault on lo 
the right side, a fault inseparable from the plan of 
Dante's poem, which, as we have already observed, 
rendered the utmost accuracy of description 
necessary. Still it is a fault. The supernatural 
agents excite an interest; but it is not the interest 15 
which is proper to supernatural agents. We feel 
that we could talk to the ghosts and demons, with- 
out any emotion of unearthly awe. We could, like 
Don Juan, ask them to supper, and eat heartily in 
their company. Dante's angels are good men with 20 
wings. His devils are spiteful, ugly execution- 
ers. His dead men are merely living men in 
strange situations. The scene which passes 
between the poet and Farinata is justly celebrated. 
Still, Farinata in the burning tomb is exactly 25 
what Farinata would have been at an auto dafe. 
Nothing can be more touching than the first inter- 
view of Dante and Beatrice. Yet what is it, but 
a lovely woman chiding, with sweet austere com- 
posure, the lover for whose affection she is grate- sc 



MILTON 77 

ful, but whose vices she reprobates? The feelings 
whicli give the passage its charm would suit the 
streets of Florence as well as the summit of the 
Mount of Purgatory. 

5 The spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost all 
other writers. His fiends, in particular, are wonder- 
ful creations. They are not metaphysical abstrac- 
tions. They are not wicked men. They are not ugly 
beasts. They have no horns, no tails, none of the 

10 fee-faw-fum of Tasso and Klopstock. They have 
just enough in common with human nature to be 
intelligible to haman beings. Their characters are, 
like their forms, marked by a certain dim resem- 
blance to those of men, but exaggerated to gigantic 

15 dimensions, and veiled in mysterious gloom. 

Perhaps the gods and demons of ^schylus may 
best bear a comparison with the angels and devils 
of Milton. The style of the Athenian had, as we 
have remarked, something of the Oriental charac- 

20 ter; and the same peculiarity may be traced in his 
mythology. It has nothing of the amenity and 
elegance which we generally find in the supersti- 
tions of Greece. All is rugged, barbaric, and 
colossal. The legends of ^schylus seem to har- 

25 monize less with the fragrant groves and graceful 
porticoes in which his countrymen paid their vows 
to the God of Light and Goddess of Desire, than 
with those huge and grotesque labyrinths of eternal 
granite in which Egypt enshrined her mystic 

80 Osiris, or in which Hindostan still bows down to 



78 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

her seven -headed idols. His favorite gods are 
those of the elder generation, the sons of heaven 
and earth, compared with whom Jupiter himself 
was a stripling and an upstart, the gigantic Titans, 
and the inexorable Furies. Foremost among his ^ 
creations of this class stands Prometheus, half 
fiend, half redeemer, the friend of man, the sullen 
and im23lacable enemy of heaven. Prometheus 
bears undoubtedly a considerable resemblance to 
the Satan of Milton. In both we find the same lo 
impatience of control, the same ferocity, the same 
unconquerable pride. In both characters also are 
mingled, though in very different proportions, 
some kind and generous feelings. Prometheus, 
however, is hardly superhuman enough. He talks is 
too much of his chains and his uneasy posture ; he' 
is rather too much depressed and agitated. His 
resolution seems to depend on the knowledge which 
he possesses that he holds the fate of his torturer 
in his hands, and that the hour of his release will 20 
surely come. But Satan is a creature of another 
sphere. The might of his intellectual nature is 
victorious over the extremity of pain. Amidst 
agonies which cannot be conceived without horror, 
he deliberates, resolves, and even exults. Against 25 
the sword of Michael, against the thunder of 
Jehovah, against the flaming lake, and the marl 
burning with solid fire, against the prospect of an 
eternity of nnintermitted misery, his spirit bears 
up unbroken, resting on its own innate energies, 30 



MILTON 79 

requiring no support from anything external, nor 
even from hope itself. 

To return for a moment to the parallel which 
we have been attempting to draw between Milton 
5 and Dante, we would add that the poetry of these 
great men has in a considerable degree taken its 
character from their moral qualities. They are 
not egotists. They rarely obtrude their idiosyn- 
crasies on their readers. They have nothing in 
10 common with those modern beggars for fame who 
extort a pittance from the compassion of the inex- 
perienced by exposing the nakedness and sores of 
their minds. Yet it would be difficult to name 
two writers whose works have been more com- 
15 pletely, though undesignedly, colored by their 
personal feelings. 

The character of Milton was peculiarly distin- 
guished by loftiness of spirit ; that of Dante by 
intensity of feeling. In every line of the Divine 
20 Comedy we discern the asperity which is produced 
by pride struggling with misery. There is perhaps 
no work in the world so deeply and uniformly 
sorrowful. The melancholy of Dante was no fan- 
tastic caprice. It was not, as far as at this dis- 
ss tance of time can be judged, the effect of external 
circumstances. It was from within. Neither love 
nor glory, neither the conflicts of earth nor the hope 
of heaven, could dispel it. It turned every conso- 
lation and every pleasure into its own nature. It 
.so resembled that noxious Sardinian soil of which the 



80 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

intense bitterness is said to have been perceptible 
even in its honey. His mind was, in the noble 
language of the Hebrew poet, "a land of dark- 
ness, as darkness itself, and where the light was as 
darkness." The gloom of his character discolors 5 
all the passions of men and all the face of nature, 
and tinges with its own livid hue the flowers of 
Paradise and the glories of the eternal throne. 
All the portraits of him are singularly character- 
istic. No person can look on the features, noble 10 
even to ruggedness, the dark furrows of the cheek, 
the haggard and woful stare of the eye, the sullen 
and contemptuous curve of the lip, and doub*" 
that they belong to a man too proud and too se^, 
sitive to be happy. 10 

Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a 
lover; and, like Dante, he had been unfortunate 
in ambition and in love. He had survived his 
health and his sight, the comforts of his home, and 
the prosperity of his party. Of the great men by 20 
whom he had been distinguished at his entrance 
into life, some had been taken away from the evil 
to come; some had carried into foreign climates 
their unconquerable hatred of oppression; some 
were pining in dungeons; and some had poured 25 
forth their blood on scaffolds. Yenal and licen- 
tious scribblers, with just sufficient talent to 
clothe the thoughts of a pandar in the style of a ■ 
bellman, were now the favorite writers of the 
Sovereign and of the public. It was a loathsome 30 



MILTON 81 

herd, which could be compared to nothing so fitly 
as to the rabble of Comas, grotesquie monsters, half 
bestial, half human, dropping with wine, bloated 
with gluttony, and reeling in obscene dances. 

5 Amidst these that fair Muse was placed, like the 
chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spotless, and 
serene, to be chattered at, and pointed at, and 
grinned at, by the whole rout of Satyrs and 
Goblins. If ever despondency and asperity could 

10 be excused in any man, they might have been 
excused in Milton. But the strength of his mind 
overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor 
gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflic- 
tions, nor political disappointments, nor abuse, 

15 nor proscription, nor neglect, had power to disturb 
his sedate and majestic patience. His spirits do 
not seem to have been high, but they were singu- 
larly equable. His temper was serious, perhaps 
stern; but it was a temper which no sufferings 

20 could render sullen or fretful. Such as it was 
when, on the eve of great events, he returned from 
his travels in the prime of health and manly 
beauty, loaded with literary distinctions, and glow- 
ing with patriotic hopes, such it continued to be 

25 when, after having experienced every calamity 
which is incident to our nature, old, poor, sight- 
less, and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die. 
Hence it was that, though he wrote the Para- 
dise Lost at a time of life when images of beauty 

30 and tenderness are in general beginning to fade, 



82 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

even from those minds in which they have not 
been effaced by anxiety and disappointment, he 
adorned it with all that is most lovely and delight- 
ful in the physical and in the moral world. 
Neither Theocritus nor Ariosto had a finer or a 5 
more healthful sense of the pleasantness of exter- 
nal objects, or loved better to luxuriate amidst 
isunbeams and flowers, the songs of nightingales, 
the juice of summer fruits, and the coolness of 
shady fountains. His conception of love unites all lo 
the voluptuousness of the Oriental harem, and all 
the gallantry of the chivalric tournament, with all 
the pure and quiet affection of an English fireside. 
His poetry reminds us of the miracles of Alpine 
scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairyland, is 
are embosomed in its most rugged and gigantic 
elevations. The roses and myrtles bloom un- 
chilled on the verge of the avalanche. 

Traces, indeed, of the peculiar character of 
Milton may be found in all his works; but it is 20 
most strongly displayed in the Sonnets. Those 
rem.arkable poems have been undervalued by critics 
who have not understood their nature. They have 
no epigrammatic point. There is none of the 
ingenuity of Filicaja in the thought, none of the 25 
hard and brilliant enamel of Petrarch in the style. 
They are simple but majestic records of the feel- 
ings of the poet ; as little tricked out for the pub- 
lic eye as his diary would have been. A victory, 
an expected attack upon the city, a momentary fit 30 



MILTON 83' 

of depression or exultation, a jest thrown out 
against one of his books, a dream which for a 
short time restored to him that beautiful face over 
which the grave had closed forever, led him to 

5 musings which, without effort, shaped themselves 
into verse. The unity of sentiment and severity 
of style which characterize these little pieces 
remind us of the Greek Anthology, or perhaps 
still more of the Collects of the English Liturgy. 

10 The noble poem on the Massacres of Piedmont is 
strictly a collect in verse. 

The Sonnets are more or less striking, according 
as the occasions which gave birth to them are more 
or less interesting. But they are, almost without 

15 exception, dignified by a sobriety and greatness of 
mind to which we know not where to look for a 
parallel. It would, indeed, be scarcely safe to 
draw any decided inferences as to the character of 
a writer from passages directly egotistical. But 

20 the qualities which we have ascribed to Milton, 
though perhaps most strongly marked in those 
parts of his works which treat of his personal feel- 
ings, are distinguishable in every page, and impart 
to all his writings, prose and poetry, English, 

35 Latin, and -Italian, a strong family likeness. 

His public conduct was such as was to be ex- 
pected from a man of a spirit so high and of an in- 
tellect so powerful. He lived at one of the most 
memorable eras in the history of mankind ; at the 

30 very crisis of the great conflict between Oromasdes 



84 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

and Arimanes, liberty and despotism, reason v and 
prejudice. That great battle was fought for no 
single generation, for no single land. The destinies 
of the human race were staked on the same cast 
with the freedom of the English people. Then were & 
first proclaimed those mighty principles which 
have since worked their way into the depths of the 
American forests, which have roused Greece from 
the slavery and degradation of two thousand years, 
and which, from one end of Europe to the other, lo 
have kindled an unquenchable fire in the hearts of 
the oppressed, and loosed the knees of the oppress- 
ors with an unwonted fear. 

Of those principles, then struggling for their 
infant existence, Milton was the most devoted and is 
eloquent literary champion. We need not say how • 
much we admire his public conduct. But we can- 
not disguise from ourselves that a large portion of 
his countrymen still think it unjustifiable. The 
civil war, indeed, has been more discussed, and is 20 
less understood, than any event in English his- 
tory. The friends of liberty labored under the 
disadvantage of which the lion in the fable com- 
plained so bitterly. Though they were the con- 
querors, their enemies were the painters. As a 25 
body, the Roundheads had done their utmost to 
decry and ruin literature; and literature was even 
with them, as, in the long run, it always is with 
its enemies. The best book on their side of the 
question is the charming narrative of Mrs. 30 



MILTON 85 

Hutchinson. May's History of the Parliament is 
good; but it breaks oil at the most interesting 
crisis of the struggle. The performance of Lud- 
low is foolish and violent ; and most of the later 

5 writers who have espoused the same cause, Old- 
mixon, for instance, and Catherine Macaulay, 
have, to say the least, been more distinguished by 
zeal than either by candor or by skill. On the 
other side are the most authoritative and the most 

10 popular historical works in our language, that of 
Clarendon, and that of Hume. The former is not 
only ably written and full of valuable information, 
but has also an air of dignity and sincerity which 
makes even the prejudices and errors with which' 

15 it abounds respectable. Hume, from whcse fasci- 
nating narrative the great mass of the reading 
public are still contented to take their opinions, 
hated religion so much that he hated liberty for 
having been allied with religion, and has pleaded 

20 the cause of tyranny with the dexterity of an advo- 
cate, while affecting the impartiality of a judge. 

The public conduct of Milton must be approved 
or condemned, according as the resistance of the 
people to Charles the First shall appear to be justi- 

25 fiable or criminal. We shall therefore make no 
apology for dedicating a few pages to the discus- 
sion of that interesting and most important 
question. We shall not argue it on general 
grounds. AYe shall not recur to those primary prin- 

30 ciples from which the claim of any government to, 



86 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

the obedience of its subjects is to be deduced. We 
are entitled to that vantage-gi'ound ; but we will 
relinquish it. We are, on this point, so confident 
of superiority, that we are not unwilling to imitate 
the ostentatious generosity of those ancient 5 
knights, who Yowed to joust without helmet or 
shield against all enemies, and to give their antago- 
nists the advantage of sun and wind. We will 
take the naked constitutional question. We con- 
fidently affirm, that every reason which can be lo 
urged in favor of the Revolution of 1688 may be 
urged with at least equal force in favor of what is 
called the Great Eebellion. 

In one respect only, we think, can the warmest 
admirers of Charks venture to say that he was a i5 
better sovereign than his son. He was not, in 
name and profession, a Papist; we say in name 
and profession, because both Charles himself and 
his creature Laud, while they abjured the innocent 
badges of Popery, retained all its worst vices, a 20 
complete subjection of reason to authority, a weak 
preference of form to substance, a childish passion 
for mummeries, an idolatrous veneration for the 
priestly character, and, above all, a merciless 
intolerance. This, however, we waive. We will 25 
concede that Charles was a good Protestant; but 
we say that his Protestantism does not make the 
slightest distinction between his case and that of 
James. 

The principles of the Revolution have often been 30 



MILTON 87 

grossly misrepresented, and never more than in 
the course of the present year. There is a certain 
class of men who, while they profess to hold in 
reverence the great names and great actions of 
5 former times, never look at them for any other 
purpose than in order to find in them some excuse 
for existing abuses. In every venerable precedent 
they pass by what is essential, and take only what 
is accidental: they keep out of sight what is 

10 beneficial, and hold up to public imitation all that 
is defective. If, in any part of any great example, 
there be anything unsound, these flesh-flies detect 
it with an unerring instinct, and dart upon it with 
a ravenous delight. If some good end has been 

15 attained in spite of them, they feel, with their 
prototype, that 

•' Their labor must be to pervert that end, 
And out of good still to find means of evil. " 

To the blessings wliich England has derived 
20 from the Revolution these people are utterly 
insensible. The expulsion of a tyrant, the solemn 
recognition' of i3opular rights, liberty, security, 
toleration, all go for nothing with them. One 
sect there was, which, from unfortunate temporary 
25 causes, it was thought necessary to keep under 
close restraint. One part of the empire there was 
so unhappily circumstanced, that at that time its 
misery was necessary to our happiness, and its 
slavery to our freedom. These are the parts of the 



88 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

Revolution which the politicians of whom we 
speak love to contemplate, and which seem to 
them not indeed to vindicate, but in some degree 
to palliate, the good which it has produced. Talk 
to them of Naples, of Spain, or of South America. 5 
They stand forth zealots for the doctrine of Divine 
Right, which has now come back to us, like a 
thief from transportation, under the alias of 
Legitimacy. But mention the miseries of Ireland. 
Then William is a hero. Then Somers and lo 
Shrewsbury are gi'eat men. Then the Revolu- 
tion is a glorious era. The very same persons 
who, in this country, never omit an opportunity of 
reviving every wretched Jacobite slander respect- 
ing the Whigs of that period, have no sooner. is 
crossed St. George's Channel, than they begin to 
fill their bumpers to the glorious and immortal 
memory. They may truly boast that they look not 
at men, but at measures. So that evil be done, 
they care not who does it ; the arbitrary Charles or 20 
the liberal William, Ferdinand the Catholic or 
Frederic the Protestant. On such occasions their 
deadliest opponents may reckon upon their candid 
construction. The bold assertions of these people 
have of late impressed a large portion of the public 25 
with an opinion that James the Second was expelled 
simply because he was a Catholic, and^that the 
Revolution was essentially a Protestant Revolution. 
But this certainly was not the case ; nor can any 
person who . has acquired more knowledge of the so 



MILTON 89 

history of those times than is to be found in Gold- 
smith's Abridgment; believe that, if James had 
held his own religious opinions without wishing to 
make proselytes, or if, wishing even to make 

5 proselytes, he had contented himself with 
exerting only his constitutional influence for that 
purpose, the Prince of Orange would ever have 
been invited over. Our ancestors, we suppose, 
knew their own meaning; and, if we may believe 

10 them, their hostility was primarily not to popery, 
but to tyranny. They did not drive out a tyrant 
because he was a Catholic; but they excluded 
Catholics from the crown, because they thought 
them likely to be tyrants. The ground on which 

15 they, in their famous resolution, declared the 
throne vacant, was this, "that James had broken 
the fundamental laws of the kingdom." Every 
man, therefore, who approves of the Revolution of 
1688 must hold that the breach of fundamental 

20 laws on the part of the sovereign justifies resist- 
ance. The question, then, is this: Had Charles 
the First broken the fundamental laws of Eng- 
land? 

No person can answer in the negative unless he 

25 refuses credit, not merely to all the accusations 
brought against Charles by his opponents, but to 
the narratives of the warmest Royalists, and to the 
confessions of the King himself. If there be any 
truth in any historian of any party who has related 

30 the events of that reign, the conduct of Charles, 



90 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

from his accession to the meeting of the Long 
Parliament, had been a continued course of oppres- 
sion and treachery. Let those who applaud the 
Revolution and condemn the Rebellion mention 
one act of James the Second to which a parallel is 5 
not to be found in the history of his father. Let 
them lay their fingers on a single article in the 
Declaration of Right, presented by the two Houses 
to William and Mary, which Charles is not 
acknowledged to have violated. He had, accord- lo 
ing to the testimony of his own friends, usurped 
the functions of the legislature, raised taxes with- 
out the consent of parliament, and quartered 
troops on the people in the most illegal and vex- 
atious manner. Not a single session of parliament ij 
had passed without some unconstitutional attack 
on the freedom of debate. The right of petition 
was grossly violated ; arbitrary judgments, exorbi- 
tant fines, and unwarranted imprisonments, were 
grievances of daily occurrence. If these things do 20 
not justify resistance, the Revolution was treason ; 
if they do, the Great Rebellion was laudable. 

But, it is said, why not adopt milder measures? 
Why, after the King had consented to so many 
reforms and renounced so many oppressive preroga- 25 
tives, did the parliament continue to rise in their 
demands at the risk of provoking a civil war? The 
ship-money had been given up. The Star Cham- 
ber had been abolished. Provision had been 
made for the frequent convocation and secure 30 



MILTON 91 

deliberation of parliaments. Why not pursue an 
end confessedly good by peaceable and regular 
means? We recur again to the analogy of the 
Revolution. Why was James driven from the 
throne? Why was he not retained upon condi- 
tions? He too had offered to call a free parlia- 
ment, and to submit to its decision all the matters 
in dispute. Yet we are in the habit of praising our 
forefathers, who preferred a revolution, a disputed 
succession, a dynasty of strangers, twenty years of 
foreign and intestine war, a standing army, and a 
national debt, to the rule, however restricted, of a 
triced and proved tyrant. The Long Parliament 
acted on the same principle, and is entitled to the 
same praise. They could not trust the King. He 
had, no doubt, passed salutary laws ; but what 
assurance was there that he would not break them? 
He had renounced oppressive prerogatives; but 
where was the security that he would not resume 
them? The nation had to deal with a man whom 
no tie could bind, a man who made and broke 
promises with equal facility, a man whose honor 
had been a hundred times pawned, and never 
redeemed. 

Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands on 
still stronger ground than the Convention of 1688. 
No action of James can be compared to the con- 
duct of Charles with respect to the Petition of 
Right. The Lords and Commons present him 
with a bill in which the constitutional limits of 



92 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

his power are marked out. He hesitates: he 
evades ; at last he bargains to give his assent for 
five subsidies. The bill receives his solemn assent: 
the subsidies are voted; but no sooner is the 
tyrant relieved than he returns at once to all the 5 
arbitrary measures which he had bound himself to 
abandon, and violates all the clauses of the very 
Act which he had been paid to pass. 

For more than ten years the people had seen the 
rights which were theirs by a double claim, by lo 
immemorial inheritance, and by recent purchase, 
infringed by the perfidious King who had recog- 
nized them. At length circumstances compelled 
Charles to summon another parliament: another 
chance was given to our fathers: were they to 15 
throw it away as they had thrown away the for- 
mer? Were they again to be cozened by h Roi h 
vent? AVere they again to advance their money on 
pledges which had been forfeited over and over 
again? Were they to lay a second Petition of 20 
Eight at the foot of the throne, to grant another 
lavish aid in exchange for another unmeaning 
ceremony, and then to take their departure, till, 
after ten years more of fraud and oppression, 
their prince should again require a supply, and 25 
again repay it with a perjury? They were com- 
pelled to choose whether they would trust a 
tyrant or conquer him. We think that they 
chose wisely and nobly. 

The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of 30 



. MILTON 93 

other malefactors against whom overwhelming 
evidence is produced, generally decline all contro- 
versy about the facts, and content themselves with 
calling testimony to character. He had so many 

5 private virtues ! And had James the Second no 
private virtues? Was Oliver Cromwell, his bitter- 
est enemies themselves being judges, destitute of 
private virtues? And what, after all, are the 
virtues ascribed to Charles? A religious zeal, not 

10 more sincere than that of his son, and .fully as 
weak 'and narrow-minded, and a few of the ordi- 
nary household decencies which half the tombstones 
in England claim for those who lie beneath them. 
A good father! A good husband! Ample apolo- 

15 gies indeed for fifteen years of persecution, tyranny, 
and falsehood ! 

We charge him with having broken his corona- 
tion oath ; and we are told that he kept his mar- 
riage vow ! We accuse him of having given up his 

20 people to the merciless inflictions of the most hot- 
headed and hard-hearted of prelates; and the 
defence is that he took his little sou on his knee, 
and kissed him ! We censure him for having 
violated the articles of the Petition of Right, after 

25 having, for good and valuable consideration, 
promised to observe them; and we are informed 
that he was accustomed to hear prayers at ' six 
o'clock in the morning! It is to such consider- 
ations as these, together with his Vandyke dress, 

30 his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he 



94 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

owes, we verily believe, most of his popularity 
with the present generation. 

For ourselves, we own that we do not under- 
stand the common phrase, a good man, but a bad 
king. We can as easily conceive a good man and 
an unnatural father, or a good man and a treacher- 
ous friend. We cannot, in estimiating the charac- 
ter of an individual, leave out of our consideration 
his conduct in the most important of all human 
relations ; and if in that relation we find him to 
have been selfish, cruel, and deceitful, we shall 
take the liberty to call him a bad man, in spite of 
all his temperance at table, and all his regularity 
at chapel. 

We cannot refrain from adding a few words 
respecting a topic on which the defenders of 
Charles are fond of dwelling. If, they say, he 
governed his people ill, he at least governed them 
after the example of his predecessors. If he vio- 
lated their privileges, it was because those privi- 
leges had not been accurately defined. No act of 
oppression has ever been imputed to him which 
has not a parallel in the annals of the Tudors. 
This point Hume has labored, with an art which is 
as discreditable in a historical work as it would be 
admirable in a forensic address. The answer is 
short, clear, and decisive. Charles had assented 
to the Petition of Right. He had renounced 
the oppressive powers said to have been exercised 
by liis predecessors, and he had renounced 



MILTON 95 

them for money. He was not entitled to set up 
his antiquated claims against his own recent 
release. 

These arguments are so obvious that it may 
5 seem superfluous to dwell upon them. But those 
wh6 have observed how much the events of that 
time are misrepresented and misunderstood, will 
not blame us for stating the case simply. It is a 
case of which the simplest statement is the 

10 strongest. 

The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, rarely 
choose to take issue on the great points of the 
question. They content themselves with exposing 
some of the crimes and follies to which public 

15 commotions necessarily give birth. They bewail 
the unmerited fate of Strafford. They execrate 
the lawless violence of the army. They laugh at 
the Scriptural names of the preachers. Major- 
generals fleecing their districts; soldiers revelling 

20 on ihe spoils of a ruined peasantry; upstarts, 
enriched by the public plunder, taking possession 
of the hospitable firesides and hereditary trees of 
the old gentry ; boys smashing the beautiful win- 
dows of cathedrals ; Quakers riding naked through 

25 the market-place; Fifth-monarchy men shouting 

for King Jo^is; agitators lecturing from the tops 

of tubs on the fate of Agag; — all these, they tell 

us, were the offspring of the Great Eebellion. 

Be it so. We are not careful to answer in this 

80 matter. These charges, were they infinitely more 



96 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

important, would not alter our opinion of an event 
which alone has made us to differ from the slaves 
who crouch beneath despotic sceptres. Many 
evils, no doubt, were produced by the civil war. 
They were the price of our liberty. Has the acqui- 5 
sition been worth the sacrifice? It is the nature of 
the Devil of tyranny to tear and rend the body 
which he leaves. Are the miseries of continued 
possession less horrible than the struggles of the 
tremendous exorcism? lo 

If it were possible that a people brought up 
under an intolerant and arbitrary system could 
subvert that system without acts of cruelty and 
folly, half the objections to despotic power would 
be removed. We should, in that case, be compelled is 
to acknowledge that it at least produces no perni- 
cious effects on the intellectual and moral charac- 
ter of a nation. We deplore the outrages which 
accompany revolutions. But the more violent the 
outrages, the more assured we feel tliata revolution 20 
was necessary. The violence of those outrages 
will always be proportioned to the ferocity and 
ignorance of the people; and the ferocity and 
ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the 
oppression and degradation under which they have 2.- 
been accustomed to live. Thus it w* in our civil 
war. The heads of the church and state reaped 
only that which they had sown. The government ^ 
had prohibited free discussion; it had clone its 
best to keep the people unacquainted with their 30 



MILTON 97 

duties and their rights. The retribution was just 
and natural. If our rulers suffered from popular 
ignorance, it was because they had themselves 
taken away the key of knowledge. If they were 
5 assailed with blind fury, it was because they had 
exacted an equally blind submission. 

It is the character of such revolutions that we 
always see the worst of them at first. Till men 
have been some time free, they know not how to 

10 use their freedom. The natives of wine countries 
are generally sober. In climates where wine is a 
rarity intemperance abounds. A newly liberated 
people may be compared to a northern army 
encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said 

15 that, when soldiers in such a situation first find 
themselves able to indulge without restraint in 
such a rare and expensive luxury, nothing is to be 
seen but intoxication. Soon, however, plenty 
teaches discretion; and, after wine has been for a 

20 few months their daily fare, they become more 
temperate tlian they had ever been in their own 
country. In the same manner, the final and per- 
manent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, 
and mercy. Its immediate effects are often atro- 

25 cious crimes, conflicting errors, scepticism on points 
the most clear, dogmatism on points the most 
mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its ene- 
mies love to exhibit it. They pull down the 
scaffolding from the half-finished edifice; they 

30 point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the 



98 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

comfortless rooms, tlie frightful irregularity of the 
whole appearance; and then ask in scorn where 
the promised splendor and comfort is to be found. 
If such miserable sophisms were to prevail there 
would never be a good house or a good government 5 
in the world. 

Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by 
some mysterious law of her nature, was condemned 
to appear at certain seasons in the form of a foul 
and 2^oisonous snake.. Those who injured her 10 
during the period of her disguise were forever 
excluded from participation in the blessings which 
she bestowed. But to those who, in spite of her 
loathsome aspect, pitied and protected her, she 
afterwards revealed herself in the beautiful and 15 
celestial form which was natural to her, accom- 
panied their steps, gi-anted all their wishes, filled 
their houses with wealth, made them happy in 
love and victorious in war. Such a spirit is 
Liberty. At times she takes the form of a hateful 20 
reptile. She grovels, she hisses, she stings. But 
woe to those who in disgust shall venture to crush 
her ! And happy are those who, having dared to 
receive her in her degraded and frightful shape, 
shall at length be rewarded by her in the time of 25 
her beauty and her glory! 

There is only one cure for the evils which newly 
acquired freedom produces ; and that cure is free- 
dom. When a prisoner first leaves his cell he 
cannot bear the light of day: he is unable to 30 



MILTON 99 

discriminate colors, or recognize faces. But the 
remedy is, not to remand him into his dungeon, 
but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The 
blaze of- truth and liberty may at first dazzle and 
5 bewilder nations which have become half blind in 
the house of bondage. But let them gaze on, and 
they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years 
men learn to reason. The extreme violence of 
opinions subsides. Hostile theories correct each 

10 other. The scattered elements of truth cease to 
contend, and begin to coalesce. And at length a 
system of justice and order is educed out of the 
chaos. 

Many politicians of our time are in the habit of 

15 laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that 
no people ought to be free till they are fit to use 
their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool 
in the old story, who resolved not to go into the 
water till he had learned to swim. If men are to 

20 wait for liberty till they become wise and good in 
slavery, they may indeed wait forever. 

Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of the 
conduct of Milton and the other wise and good 
men who, in spite of much that was ridiculous and 

85 hateful in the conduct of their associates, stood 
firmly by the cause of Public Liberty. We are 
not aware that the poet has been charged with 
personal participation in any of the blamable 
excesses of that time. The favorite topic of his 

30 enemies is the line of conduct which he pursued 



100 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

with regard to the execution of the King. Of 
that celebrated proceeding we by no means 
approve. Still we must say, in justice to the 
many eminent persons who concurred in it, and in 
justice more particularly to the eminent person 5 
who defended it, that nothing can be more absurd 
than the imputations which, for the last hundred 
and sixty years, it has been the fashion to cast 
upon the Regicides. We have, throughout, 
abstained from appealing to first principles. AVe 10 
will not appeal to them now. We recur again to 
the parallel case of the Revolution. What essen- 
tial distinction can be drawn between the execu- 
tion of the father' and the deposition of the son? 
What constitutional maxim is there which applies 15 
to the former and not to the latter? The King 
can do no wrong. If so, James was as innocent as 
Charles could have been. The minister only 
ought to be responsible for the acts of the Sover- 
eign. If so, why not impeach Jeffre3^s and retain 20 
James? The person of a King is sacred. Was 
the person of James considered sacred at the 
Boyne? To discharge cannon against an army in 
which a king is known to be posted is to approach 
pretty near to regicide. Charles, too, it should 25 
always be remembered, was put to death by men 
who had been exasperated by the hostilities of 
several years, and who had never been bound to 
him by any other tie than that which was common 
to them with all their fellow-citizens. Those Avho 30 



MILTON 103 

drove James from his throne, who seduced his 
army, who alienated his friends, who first im- 
prisoned him in his palace, and then turned him 
out of it, who broke in upon his very slumbers by 

5 imperious messages, who pursued him with fire 
and sword from one part of the empire to another, 
who hanged, drew, and quartered his adherents, 
and attainted his innocent heir, were his nephew 
and his two daughters. When we reflect on all 

10 these things, Ave are at a loss to conceive how the 
same persons who, on the fifth of November, thank 
God for wonderfully conducting his servant 
William, and for making all opposition fall before 
him until he became our King and Governor, can, 

15 on the thirtieth of January, contrive to be afraid 
that the blood of the Eoyal Martyr may be visited 
on themselves and their children. 

We disapprove, we repeat, of the execution of 
Charles; not because the constitution exempts 

20 the King from res23onsibility, for we know that all 
such maxims, however excellent, have their excep- 
tions ; nor because we feel any peculiar interest in 
his character, for we think that his sentence 

' describes him with perfect justice as "a tyrant, a 

25 traitor, a murderer, and a public enemy;" but 
because we are convinced that the measure was 
most injurious to the cause of freedom. He 
whom it removed was a captive and a hostage : his 
neir, to whom the allegiance of every Eoyalist was 

j! instantly transferred, was at large. The Presby- 



102 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

terians could never have been perfectly reconciled 
^,0 the father ; they had no such rooted enmity to 
the son. The great body of the people, also, con- 
templated that proceeding with feelings which, 
however unreasonable, no government could safely 5 
t'enture to outrage. 

But though we think the conduct of the Regi- 
cides blamable, that of Milton appears to us in a 
very different light. The deed was done. It 
could not be undone. The evil was incurred ; and lo 
the object was to render it as small as possible. 
AVe censure the chiefs of the army for not yielding 
to the popular opinion j but we cannot censure 
Milton for wishing to change that opinion. The 
very feeling which would have restrained us from 15 
committing the act, would liave led us, after it had 
been committed, to defend it against the ravings 
of servility and superstition. For the sake of public 
liberty we wish that the thing had not been done 
while the people disapproved of it. But, for the 20 
sake of public liberty, we should also have wislied 
the people to approve of it when it was done. K 
anything more were wanting to the justification of 
Milton, the book of Salmasius would furnish it. 
That miserable performance is now with justice 2n 
considered only as a beacon to word-catchers who 
wish to become statesmen. The celebrity of the 
man who refuted it, the "^neas magni dextra," 
gives it all its fame with the present generation. 
In that age the state of things was different. It 3c 



*» MILTON 103 

was not then fully understood how vast an interval 
separates the mere classical scholar from the polit- 
ical philosopher. Nor can it be doubted that a 
treatise which, bearing the name of so eminent a 
5 critic, attacked the fundamental principles of all 
free governments, must, if suffered to remain 
unanswered, have produced a most pernicious 
effect on the public mind. 

We wish to add a few words relative to another 

10 subject, on which the enemies of Milton delight to 
dwell, — his conduct during the administration of 
the Protector. That an enthusiastic votary of 
liberty should accept office under a military usurper 
seems, no doubt, at first sight, extraordinary. 

15 But all the circumstances in which the country 
was then placed were extraordinary. The ambi- 
tion of Oliver was of no vulgar kind. He never 
seems to have coveted despotic power. He at first 
fought sincerely and manfully for the Parliament, 

20 and never deserted it till it had deserted its duty. 
If he dissolved it by force, it was not till he found 
that the few members who remained after so many 
deaths, secessions, and expulsions, were desirous to 
appropriate to themselves a power which they held 

35 only in trust, and to inflict upon England the 
curse of a Venetian oligarchy. But even when 
thus placed by violence at the head of affairs, he 
did not assume unlimited power. He gave the 
country a constitution far more perfect than any 

30 which had at that time been known in the world. 



104 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

He reformed the representative system in a manner 
which has extorted praise even from Lord Claren- 
don. For himself he demanded indeed the first 
place in the commonwealth; bnt with powers 
scarcely so great as those of a Dutch stadtholder s 
or an American president. He gave the Parlia- ' 
ment a voice in the appointment of ministers, and 
left to it the whole legislative authority, not even 
reserving to himself a veto on its enactments ; and 
he did not require that the chief magistracy should lo 
be hereditary in his family. Thus far, we think, 
if the circumstances of the time and the opportu- 
nities which he had of aggrandizing himself be 
fairly considered, he will not lose by comparison 
with Washington or Bolivar. Had his moderation 15 
been met by corresponding moderation, there is no 
reason to think that he would have overstepped the 
line which he had traced for himself. But when 
he found that his parliaments questioned the 
authority under which they met, and that he was 30 
in danger of being deprived of the restricted power 
which was absolutely necessary to his personal 
safety, then, it must be acknowledged, he adopted 
a more arbitrary policy. 

Yet, though we believe that the intentions of 25 
Cromwell were at first honest, though we believe 
that he was di'iven from the noble course which 
he had marked out for himself by the almost irre- 
sistible force of circumstances, though we admire, 
in common with all men of all parties, the ability 30 



MILTON 105 

and energy of his splendid administration, we are 
not pleading for arbitrary and lawless power, even 
in his hands. We know that a good constitution 
is infinitely better than 'the best despot. But we 

5 suspect, that at the time of which we speak, the 
violence of religious and political enmities rendered 
a stable and happy settlement next to impossible. 
The choice lay, not between Cromwell and liberty, 
but between Cromwell and the Stuarts. That 

10 Milton chose well, no man can doubt who fairly 
compares the events of the protectorate with those 
of the thirty years which succeeded it, the darkest 
and most disgraceful in the 'English annals. 
Cromwell was evidently laying, though in an 

15 irregular manner, the foundations of an admirable 
system. Never before had religious liberty and 
the freedom of discussion been enjoyed in a greater 
degree. Never had the national honor been better 
upheld abroad, or the seat of justice better filled at 

20 home. And it was rarely that any opposition 
which stopped short of open rebellion provoked the 
resentment of the liberal and magnanimous 
usurper. The institutions which he had estab- 
lished, as set down in the Instrument of Govern- 

25 ment and the Humble Petition and Advice, were 
excellent. His practice, it is true, too often 
departed from the theory of these institutions. 
But had he lived a few years longer, it is probable 
that his institutions would have survived him, and 

so that his arbitrary practice would have died with 



106 • 'MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

him. His power had not been consecrated by 
ancient prejudices. It was upheld only by his 
great personal qualities. Little, therefore, was to 
be dreaded from a second protector, unless he were 
also a second Oliver Cromwell. The events which 5 
followed his decease are the most complete vindi- 
cation of those who exerted themselves to uphold 
his authority. His death dissolved the whole 
frame of society. The army rose against the 
Parliament, the different corps of the army against 10 
each other. Sect raved against sect. Party 
plotted against party. The Presbyterians, in their . 
eagerness to be revenged on the Independents, 
sacrificed their own liberty, and deserted all their 
old principles. AYithout casting one glance on the 15 
past, or requiring one stipulation for the future, 
they threw down their freedom at the feet of the 
most frivolous and heartless of tyrants. 

Then came those days, never to be recalled 
without a blush, the days of servitude without 20 
loyalty, and sensuality without love; of dwarfish 
talents and gigantic vices; the paradise of cold 
hearts aud narrow minds; the golden age of the 
coward, the bigot, and the slave. The King 
cringed to his rival that he might trample on his 25 
people, sank into a viceroy of France, and pocketed 
with complacent infamy her degrading insults and 
her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots, 
and the jests of buffoons, regulated the policy of 
the state. The government had just ability » 



MILTON 107 

enough to deceive, and just religion enough to 
persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff 
of every gi'inning courtier, and the Anathema 
Maranatha of every fawning dean. In every high 

5 place, worship was paid to Charles and James, 
Belial and Moloch ; and England propitiated those 
obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best 
and bravest children. Crime succeeded to crime, 
and disgrace to disgrace, till the race, accursed of 

10 God and man, was a second time driven forth, to 
wander on the face of the earth, and to be a by- 
word and a shaking of the head to the nations. 

Most of the remarks which we have hitherto 
made on the public character of Milton, apply to 

15 him only as one of a large body. We shall proceed 
to notice some of the peculiarities which distin- 
guished him from his contemporaries. And for 
that purpose it is necessary to take a short survey 
of the parties into which the political world was at 

20 that time divided. We must premise that our 
observations are intended to apply only to those 
who adhered, fi'om a sincere preference, to one or 
to the other side. In days of public commotion 
every faction, like an Oriental army, is attended 

25 by a crowd of camp-followers, a useless and heart 
less rabble, who prowl round its line of march in 

. the hope of picking up something under its pro- 
tection, but desert it in the day of battle, and 
often join to exterminate it after a defeat. Eng- 

30 land, at the time of which we are treating, 



108 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

abounded with fickle and selfisli politicians, who 
transferred their support to every government as 
it rose; who kissed the hand of the King in 1640, 
and spat in his face in 1649; who shouted with 
equal glee when Cromwell was inaugurated in t 
Westminster Hall, and when he was dug up to be 
hanged at Tyburn; who dined on calves' heads, or 
stuck up oak-branches, as circumstances altered, 
without the slightest shame or repugnance. These 
we leave out of the account. We take our esti- lo 
mate of parties from those who really deserve to be 
called partisans. 

,AYe would speak first of the Puritans, the most 
remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the 
world has ever produced. The odious and ridicu- is 
lous parts of their character lie on the surface. 
He that runs may read them ; nor have there been 
wanting attentive and malicious observers to point 
them out. For many years after the Restoration, 
they were the theme of unmeasured invective and 20 
derision. They were exposed to the utmost licen- 
tiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time 
when the press and the stage were most licentious. 
They were not men of letters ; they were, as a 
body, unpopular; they could not defend them- 25 
selves; and the public would not take them 
under its protection. /They were therefore aban- 
doned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of 
the sathists and dramatists. The ostentatious 
simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their so 



MILTON lOG 

nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, 
their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which 
they introduced on every occasion, their contempt 
of human learning, their detestation of polite 

5 amusements, were indeed fair game for the 
laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone 
that the philosophy of history is to be learned. 
And he who approaches this subject should care- 
fully guard against the influence of that potent 

10 ridicule which has already misled so many excel- 
lent Tyr iters. 

"Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio 
Che mortali perigli in se contiene; 
Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio, 
15 Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene." 

Those who roused the people to resistance; who 
directed their measures through a long series of 
eventful years ; who formed, out of the most un- 
promising materials, the finest army that Europe 

20 had ever seen; who trampled down King, Church, 
and Aristocracy; -who, in the short intervals of 
domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of 
England terrible to every nation on the face of the 
earth, were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their 

25 absurdities were mere external badges, like the 
signs of freemasonry, or the dresses of friars. We 
regret that these badges were not more attract- 
ive. We regret that a body to whose courage and 
talents mankind has owed inestimable obligations 

30 had not the lofty elegance which distinguished somo 



110 MAC AULA Y'S ESSAYS 

of the adherents of Charles the First, or the easy 
good-breeding for which the Court of Charles the 
Second was celebrated. But, if we must make our 
choice, we shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn 
from the specious caskets which contain only the 5 
Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix on the 
plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure. 

The Puritans wefe men whose minds had 
derived a peculiar character from the daily con- 
templation of superior beings and eternal interests, lo 
Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, 
an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed 
every event to the will of the Great Being, for 
whose power nothing was too vast, for whose 
inspection nothing was too minute. To know 15 
him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them 
the gi'eat end of existence. They rejected with 
contempt the ceremonious homage which other 
sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. 
Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the 20 
Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to 
gaze full on his intolerable brightness, and to com- 
mune with him face to face. Hence originated 
their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The 
difference between the greatest and the meanest of 25 
mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with 
the boundless interval which separated the whole 
race from him on whom their own eyes were con- 
stantly fixed. They recognized no title to supe- 
riority but his favor ; and, confident of that favor. 30 



MILTON 111 

they despised all the accomplishments and all the 
dignities of the world. If tiiey were unacquainted 
with the works of philosophers and poets, they 
were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their 

5 names were not found in the registers of heralds, 
they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their 
steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of 
menials, legions of ministering angels had charge 
over them. Their palaces were houses not made 

10 with hands; their diadems crowns of glory which 
should never fade away. On tlie rich and the 
eloquent, -'on nobles and priests, they looked down 
with contempt ; for they esteemed themselves rich 
in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a 

15 more sublime language, nobles by the right of an 
earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a 
mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a 
being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible 
importance belonged, on whose slightest action 

20 the spirits of light and darkness looked with 
anxious interest, who had been destined,^ before 
heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity 
which should continue when heaven and earth 
should have passed away. Events which short- 

25 sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had 
been ordained on his account. For his sake em- 
pires had risen, and flourished and decayed. For 
his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by 
the pen of the Evangelist and the harp of the 

30 prophet. He had been wrested by no common 



112 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He 
had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar 
agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was 
for him that the sun had been darkened, that the 
rocks had been rent, that the dead had risen, that 5 
all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her 
expiring God. 

Thus the Puritan was made up of two different 
men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, grati- 
tude, passion; the other proud, calm, inflexible, 10 
sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust 
before his Maker ; but he set his foot on the neck 
of his king. In his devotional retirement, he 
prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. 
He was half maddened by glorious or terrible 15 
illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the 
tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam 
of the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from 
dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, he thought 
himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial 20 
year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness 
of his soul that God had hid his face from him. 
But when he took his seat in the council, or girt 
on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings 
of the soul hsd left no perceptible trace behind 25 
them. People who saw nothing of the godly 
but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from 
them but their groans and their whining hymns, 
might laugh at them. But those had little reason to 
laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate 3C 



MILTON 113 

or in the field of battle. These fanatics brought 
to civil and military affairs a coolness of judgment 
and an immutability of purpose which some writers 
have thought inconsistent with their religious 

5 zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects 
of it. The intensity of their feelings on one sub- 
ject made them tranquil on every other. One 
overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity 
and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its 

10 terrors and pleasure its charms. They had their 
smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sor- 
rows, but not for the things of this world. Enthu- 
siasm had made them Stoics, had cleared their 
minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, 

15 and raised them above the influence of danger and 
of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to 
pursue unwise ' ends, but never to choose unwise 
means. They went through the world, like Sir 
Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail, crushing 

20 and trampling down oppressors, mingling with 
human beings, but having neither part nor lot in 
human infirmities ; insensible to fatigue, to pleas- 
ure, and to pain; not to be pierced by any weapon,, 
not to be withstood by any barrier. 

35 Such we believe to have been the character of 
the Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their 
manners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their 
domestic habits. We acknowledge that the tone ol 
their minds was often injured by straining after 

80 things too high for mortal reach; and we knew 



114 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

that, in spite of their hatred of Popery, they too 
often fell into the worst vices of that bad system, 
intolerance and extravagant ansterity; that they 
had their anchorites and their crusades, their 
Dunstans and their De Montforts, their Dominies 5 
and their Escobars. Yet, when all circumstances 
are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to 
pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and a 
useful body. 

The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty lo 
mainly because it was the cause of religion. There 
was another party, by no means numerous, but 
distinguished by learning and ability, Avhich acted 
with them on very different principles. We speak 
of those whom Cromwell was accustomed to call is 
the Heathens, men who were, in the phraseology 
of that time, doubting Thomases or careless 
Gallios with regard to religious subjects, but 
passionate worshippers of freedom. Heated by 
the study of ancient literature, they set up their 20 
country as their idol, and proposed to themselves 
the heroes of Plutarch as their examples. They 
seem to have borne some resemblance to the Brisso- 
tines of the French Revolution, But it is not 
very easy to draw the line of distinction between 25 
them and their devout associates, whose tone and 
manner they sometimes found it convenient to 
affect, and sometimes, it is probable, imperceptibly 
adopted. 

We now come to the Eoyalists. We shall 30 



MILTON 115 

attempt to speak of them, as we have spoken of 
theu' antagonists, with perfect candor. We shall 
not charge upon a whole party the profligacy and 
baseness of the horse-boys, gamblers, and bravoes, 

5 whom the hope of license and plunder attracted 
from all the dens of Whitefriars to the standard of 
Chai'les, and who disgraced their associates by 
excesses which, under the stricter discipline of the 
Parliamentary armies, were never tolerated. We 

10 will select a more favorable specimen. Thinking 
as we do that the cause of the King was the cause 
of bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot refrain from 
looking with complacency on the character of the 
honest old Cavaliers. We feel a national pride in 

15 comparing them with the instruments which the 
despots of other countries are compelled to em- 
ploy, with the mutes who throng their antecham- 
bers, and the Janissaries who mount guard at their 
gates. Our royalist countrymen were not heart- 

20 less, dangling courtiers, bowing at every step, and 
simpering at every word. They were not mere 
machines for destruction, dressed up in uniforms, 
caned into skill, intoxicated into valor, defending 
without love, destroying without hatred. There 

25 was a freedom in their subserviency, a nobleness in 
their very degradation. The sentiment of indi- 
vidual independence was strong within them. 
They were indeed misled, but by no base or selfish 
motive. Compassion and romantic honor, the 

so prejudices of childhood, and the venerable names 



116 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

of history, threw over them a spell potent as that 
of Duessa; and, like the Eed-Cross Knight, they 
thought that they were doing battle for an injured 
beauty, while they defended a false and loathsome 
sorceress. In truth, they scarcely entered at all - 
into the merits of the political question. It was 
not for a treacherous king or an intolerant church 
that they fought, but for the old banner which had 
waved in so many battles over the heads of their 
fathers, and for the altars at which they had lo 
received the hands of their brides. Though noth 
ing could be more erroneous than their political 
opinions, they possessed, in a far greater degree 
than their adversaries, those qualities which are 
the grace of private life. With many of the vices if 
of the Round Table, they had also many of its 
virtues, — courtesy, generosity, veracity, tenderness, 
and respect for women. They had far more both 
of profound an d of polite learning than the Puri- 
tans. Their manners were more engaging, their 20 
tempers more amiable, their tastes more elegant, 
and their households more cheerful. 

Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes 
which we have described. He was not a Puritan. 
He was not a free-thinker. He was not a Royalist, g."! 
In his character the noblest qualities of every 
party were combined in harmonious union. From 
the Parliament and from the Court, from the con- 
venticle and from the Gothic cloister, from the 
gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, 30 



MILTON 117 

and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable 
Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself 
whatever was great and good, while it rejected all 
the base and pernicious ingredients by which those 

5 liner elements were defiled. Like the Puritans, he 
lived 

"As ever in his great task-master's eye." 
Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on 
an Almighty Judge and an eternal reward. And 

10 hence he acquired their contempt of external 
circumstances, their fortitude, their tranquillity, 
their inflexible resolution. But not the coolest 
sceptic or the most profane scoffer was more per- 
fectly free from the contagion of their frantic 

15 delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous 
jargon, their scorn of science, and their aversion 
to pleasure. Hating tyranny with a perfect 
hatred, lie had nevertheless all the estimable and 
ornamental qualities which were almost entirely 

20 monopolized by the party of the tyrant. There 
was none who had a stronger sense of the value ol 
literature, a finer relish for every elegant amuse- 
ment, or a more chivalrous delicacy of honor and 
love. Though his opinions were democratic, his 

25 tastes and his associations were such as harmonize 
best with monarchy and aristocracy. He was 
under the influence of all the feelings by which the 
gallant Cavaliers were misled. But of those feel- 
ings he was the master and not the slave. Like 

30 the hero of Homer, he enjoyed all the pleasures of 



il8 MACAULAY'S EttSAYS 

fascination; but he was not fascinated. He 
listened to the song of the Sirens; yet he glided 
by without being seduced to their fatal shore. 
He tasted the cup of Circe ; but he bore about him 
a sure antidote against the effects of its bewitching 5 
sweetness. The illusions which captivated his 
imagination never impaired his reasoning powers. 
.The statesman was proof against the splendor, the 
solemnity, and the romance which enchanted the 
poet. , Any person who will contrast the senti- m 
ments expressed in his treatises on Prelacy with 
the exquisite lines on ecclesiastical architecture 
and music in the Penseroso, which was published 
about the same time, will understand our meaning. 
This is an inconsistency which, more than any- is 
thing else, raises his character in our estimation, 
because it shows how many private tastes and feel- 
ings he sacrificed, in order to do what he con- 
sidered his duty to mankind. It is the very 
struggle of the noble Othello. His heart relents ; 20 
but his hand is firm. He does naught in hate, 
but all in honor. He kisses the beautiful deceiver 
before he destroys her. 

That from which the public character of Milton 
derives its great and peculiar splendor, still 25 
remains to be mentioned. If he exerted himself to 
overthrow a forsworn king and a persecuting hier- 
archy, he exerted himself in conjunction with 
others. But the glory of the battle which he 
fought for the species of freedom which is the most 30 



MILTON 119 

valuable, and which was then the least understood, 
the freedom of the human mind, is all his own. 
Thousands and tens of thousands among his con- 
temporaries raised their voices against ship-money 

5 and the Star Chamber. But there were few 
indeed who discerned the more fearful evils of 
moral and intellectual slavery, and the benefits 
which would result from the liberty of the press 
and the unfettered exercise of private judgment. 

10 These were the objects which Milton justly con- 
ceived to be the most important. He was desirous 
that the people should think for themselves as well 
as tax themselves, and should be emancipated from 
the dominion of prejudice as well as from that of 

15 Charles. He knew that those who, with the best 
intentions, overlooked these schemes of reform, 
and contented themselves with pulling down the 
King and imprisoning the malignants, acted like 
the heedless brothers in his own poem, who, in 

20 their eagerness to disperse the train of the sorcerer, 
neglected the means of liberating the captive. 
They thought only of conquering when they 
should have thought of disenchanting. 

"Oh, ye mistook! Ye should have snatched his wand 
25 And bound him fast. Without the rod reversed, 
And backward mutters of dissevering power, 
We cannot free the lady that sits here 
Bound in strong fetters fixed and motionless." 

To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backward, 
80 to break the ties which bound a stupefied people to 



120 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

the seat of enchantment, was the noble aim of 
Milton. To this all his public conduct was 
directed. For this he joined the Presbyterians; 
for this he forsook them. He fought their peril- 
ous battle ; but he turned away with disdain from £ 
their insolent triumph. He saw that they, like 
those whom they had vanquished, were hostile to 
the liberty of thought. He therefore joined the 
Independents, and called upon Cromwell to break 
the secular chain, and to save free conscience from lo 
the paw of the Presbyterian wolf. AVith a view to 
the same great object, he attacked the licensing 
system, in that sublime treatise which every states- 
man should wear as a sign upon his hand and as 
frontlets between his eyes. His attacks were, in is 
general, directed less against particular abuses 
than against those deeply seated errors on which 
almost all abuses are founded, the servile worship 
of eminent men and the irrational dread of inno- 
vation. 20 

That he might shake the foundations of these 
debasing sentiments more effectually, he always 
selected for himself the boldest literary services. 
He never came up in the rear, when the outworks 
had been carried and the breach entered. He 25 
pressed into the forlorn hope. At the beginning 
of the changes, he wrote with incomparable energy 
and eloquence against the bishops. But, when 
his opinion seemed likely to prevail, he passed on 
to other subjects, and abandoned prelacy to the 30 



MILTON 121 

crowd of writers who now hastened to insult a 
falling party. There is no more hazardous enter- 
prise than that of bearing the torch of truth into 
those dark and infected recesses in which no light 

5 has ever shone. But it was the choice and the 
pleasure of Milton to penetrate the noisome vapors, 
and to brave the terrible explosion. Those who 
most disapprove of his opinions must respect the 
hardihood with which he maintained them. He, 

10 in general, left to others the credit of expounding 
and defending the popular parts of his religious 
and political creed. He took his own stand upon 
those Avhich the great body of his countrymen 
reprobated as criminal, or derided as paradoxical. 

15 He stood up for divorce and regicide. He attacked 
the prevailing systems of education. His radiant 
and beneficent career resembled that of the god of 
light and fertility : — 

"Nitor in adversum; nee me, qui csetera, vincit 
20 Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi. " 

It is to be regretted that the prose writings of 
Milton should, in our time, be so little read. As 
compositions, they deserve the attention of every 
man who wishes to become acquainted with the 
25 full power of the English language. They abound 
with passages compared with which the finest 
declamations of Burke sink into insignificance. 
They are a perfect field of cloth of gold. The 
style is stiff with gorgeous embroidery. Not even 



122 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

in the earlier books of the Paradise Lost has the 
great poet ever risen higher than in those .parts of 
his controversial works in which his feelings, 
excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts of 
devotional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his 5 
own majestic language, "a sevenfold chorus of 
hallelujahs and harping symphonies." 

We had intended to look more closely at these 
performances, to analyze the peculiarities of the 
diction, to dwell at some length on the sublime lo 
wisdom of the Areopagitica and the nervous rhet- 
oric of the Iconoclast, and to point out some of 
those magnificent passages which occur in the 
Treatise of Eeformation, and the Animadversions 
on the Remonstrant. But the length to which is 
our remarks have already extended renders this 
impossible. 

We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely 
tear ourselves away from the subject. The days 
immediately following the publication of this relic 20 
of Milton appear to be peculiarly set apart, and 
consecrated to his memory. And we shall scarcely 
be censured if, on this his festival, we be found 
lingering near his shrine, how worthless soever 
may be the offering which we bring to it. While 25 
this book lies on our table, we seem to be contem- 
poraries of the writer. We are transported a 
hundi'ed and fifty years back. We can almost 
fancy that we are visiting him in his small lodg- 
ing; that we see him sitting at the old organ so 



MILTON 123 

beneath the faded green hangings; that we can 
catch the quick twinkle of his eyes, rolling in vain 
to find the day ; that we are reading in the lines 
of his noble countenance the proud and mournful 

5 history of his glory and his affliction. We image 
to ourselves the breathless silence in which we 
should listen to his slightest word; the passionate 
veneration with which we should kneel to kiss his 
hand and weep upon it; the earnestness with 

10 which we should endeavor to console him, if 
indeed such a spirit could need consolation, for the 
neglect of an age unworthy of his talents and his 
Virtues; the eagerness with which we should con- 
test with his daughters, or with his Quaker friend 

15 Elwood, the j^rivilege of reading Homer to him, or 
of taking down the immortal accents which flowed 
from his lips. 

These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we 
cannot be ashamed of them; nor shall we be sorry 

20" if what we have written shall in any degi'ee excite 
them in other minds. AVe are not much in the 
habit of idolizing either the living or the dead. 
And we think that there is no more certain 
indication of a weak and ill-regulated intellect 

25 than .that propensity which, for want of a better 
name, we will venture to christen Boswellism. 
But there are a few characters which have stood 
the closest scrutiny and the severest tests, which 
have been tried in the furnace and have proved 

30 pure, which have been weighed in the balance and 



124 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

have not been found wanting, which have been 
declared sterling by the general consent of man- 
kind, and which are visibly stamped with the 
image and superscription of the Most High. 
These great men we trust that we know how to 5 
prize; and of these was Milton. The siglit of his 
books, the sound of his name, are pleasajit to us. 
His thoughts resemble those celestial fruits and 
flowers which the Virgin Martyr of Massinger sent 
down from the gardens of Paradise to the earth, 10 
and which were distinguished from the productions 
of. other soils, not only by superior bloom and 
sweetness, but by miraculous efficacy to invigorate 
and to heal. They are powerful, not only to 
delight, but to elevate and purify. Nor do we 15 
envy the man who can study either the life or the 
writings of the great poet and patriot, without 
aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sublime works 
with which his genius has enriched our literature, 
but the zeal with wMch he labored for the public 20 
good, the fortitude with which he endured every 
private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he 
looked down on temptations and dangers, the 
deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and tyrants, 
and the faith which he so sternly kept with his 25 
country and with his fame. 



THE LIFE AIsTD WEITIll^GS 
OF ADDISOI^ 



The Life of Joseph Addison. By Lucy Aikin. 2 vols., 
8vo. London: 1843. 

Some reviewers are of opinion that a lady wHo 
dares to publish a book renounces by that act the 
franchises appertaining to her sex, and can claim 
no exemption from the utmost rigor of critical 

5 procedure. From that opinion we dissent. We 
admit, indeed, that in a country which boasts of 
many female writers, eminently qualified by their 
talents and acquirements to influence the public 
mind, it would be of most pernicious consequence 

lO that inaccurate history or unsound philosophy 
should be suffered to pass uncensured, merely 
because the offender chanced to be a lady. But 
we conceive that, on such occasions, a critic would 
do well to imitate the courteous knight who found 

15 himself compelled by duty to keep the lists against 
Bradamante. He, we are told, defended success- 
fully the cause of which he was the champion ; but 
before the fight began, exchanged Balisarda for a 

135 



126 .^ACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

less deadly sword, of wliicli he carefully blunted 
the point and edge. 

Nor are the immunities of sex the only immu- 
nities which Miss Aikin may rightfully plead. 
Several of her works, and especially the very 5 
pleasing Memoirs of the Reign of James the First, 
have fully entitled her to the privileges enjoyed by 
good writers. One of those privileges we hold to 
be this, that such writers, when, either from the 
unlucky choice of a subject, or from the indo- lo 
lence too often produced by success, they happen to 
fail, shall not be subjected to the severe discipline 
which it is sometimes necessary to inflict upon 
dunces and impostors, but shall merely be re- 
minded by a gentle touch, like that with which 15 
the Laputan flapper roused his dreaming lord, 
that it is high time to wake. 

Our readers will probably infer from what we 
have said that Miss Aikin's book has disappointed 
us. The truth is, that she is not well acquainted 20 
with her subject. No person who is not familiar 
with the political and literary history of England 
during the reigns of William the Third, of Anne, 
and of George the First, can possibly write a good 
life of Addison. Now, we mean no reproach to 25 
Miss Aikln, and many will think that we pay her a 
com;^'iment, when we say that her studies have 
taken a different direction. She is better acquainted 
with Shakespeare and Raleigh, than with Con- 
greve and Prior ; and is far more at home among 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 127 

the ruffs and peaked beards of Theobald's than 
among the Steenkirks and flowing periwigs which 
surrounded Queen Anne's tea-table at Hampton. 
She seems to have written about the Elizabethan 

5 age, because she had read much about it; she 
seems, on the other hand, to have read a little 
about the age of Addison, because she had deter- 
mined to wi'ite about it. The consequence is that 
she has had to describe men and things without 

10 having either a correct or a vivid idea of tliem, and 
that she has often fallen into errors of a very 
serious kind. The reputation which Miss Aikin 
has justly earned stands so high, and the charm of 
Addison's letters is so great, that a second edition 

15 of this work may probably be required. If so, we 
hope that every paragraph will be revised, and 
that every date and fact about which there can be 
the smallest doubt v/ill be carefully verified. 

To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment 

20 as much like affection as any sentiment can be, 
.which is inspired by one who has been sleeping a 
hundred and twenty years in Westminster Abbey. 
We trust, however, that this feeling will not betray 
us into that abject idolatry which we have often 

25 had occasion to reprehend in others, and which 
seldom fails to make both the idolater and the idol 
ridiculous. A man of genius and virtue is but a 
man. All his powers cannot be equally developed ; 
nor can we expect from him perfect self -kn owl - 

80 edge. We need not, therefore, hesitate to admit 



128 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

that Addison has left us some comi^ositions which 
do not rise above mediocrity, some heroic poems 
hardly equal to Parnell's, some criticism as super- 
ficial as Dr. Blair's, and a tragedy not very much 
better than Dr. Johnson's. It is praise enough to 3 
say of a writer that, in a high department of - 
literature, in which many eminent writers have 
distinguished themselves, he has had no equal; 
and this may with strict justice be said of Addison. 

As a man, he may not have deserved the ado- lo 
ration which he received from those who, bewitched 
by his fascinating society, and indebted for all the 
comforts of life to his generous and delicate friend- 
ship, worshipped him nightly in his favorite temple 
at Button's. But, after full inquiry and impartial 15 
reflection, we have long been convinced that he 
deserved as much love and est6em as can be justly 
claimed by any of our infirm and erring race. 
Some blemishes may undoubtedly be detected in his 
character ; but the more carefully it is examined, 20 
the more it will appear, to use the phrase of the old 
anatomists, sound in the noble parts, free from all 
taint of perfidy, of cowardice, of cruelty, of ingrati- 
tude, of envy. Men may easily be named in whom 
some particular good disposition has been more 25 
conspicuous than in Addison. But the just har- 
mony of qualities, the exact temper between the 
stern and the humane virtues, the habitual ob- 
servance of every law, not only of moral rectitude, 
but of moral grace and dignity, distinguish him 30] 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 129 

from all men who have been tried by equally 
strong temptations, and about whose conduct we 
possess equally full information. 

His father was the Reverend Lancelot Addison, 

5 who, though eclipsed by his more celebrated son, 
made some figure in the world, and occupies with 
credit two folio pages in the Biographia Britan- 
nica. Lancelot was sent up as a poor scholar from 
Westmoreland to Queen's College, Oxford, in the 

10 time of the Commonwealth; made some progress 
in learning; became, like most of his fellow-stu- 
dents, a violent Royalist ; lampooned the heads of 
the university, and was forced to ask pardon on 
his bended knees. When he had left college he 

15 earned a humble subsistence by reading the liturgy 
of the fallen church to the families of those sturdy 
squires whose manor-houses were scattered over 
the Wild of Sussex. After the Restoration his 
loyalty was rewarded with the post of chaplain to 

20 the garrison of Dunkirk. When Dunkirk was 
sold to France he lost his employment. But 
Tangier had been ceded by Portugal to England as 
part of the marriage portion of the Infanta Cathar- 
ine; and to Tangier Lancelot Addison was sent. 

25 A more miserable situation can hardly be con- 
ceived. It was difficult to say whether the unfortu- 
nate settlers were more tormented by the heats or 
by the rains, by the soldiers within the wall or by 
the Moors without it. One advantage the chaplain 

30 had. He enjoyed an excellent opportunity of 



130 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

stujiying the history and manners of Jews and 
Mahometans ; and of this opportunity he appears 
to have made excellent use. On his return to 
England, after some years of banishment, he pub- 
lished an interesting volume on the Polity and 5 
Religion of Barbary, and another on the Hebrew 
Customs and the State of Rabbinical Learning. 
He rose to eminence in his profession, and became 
one of the royal chaplai^is, a Doctor of Divinity, 
Archdeacon of Salisbury, and Dean of Liijhfield. lo 
It is said that he would have been made a bishop 
after the Revolution if he had not given offence to 
the government by strenuously opposing, in the 
Convocation of 1689, the liberal policy of William 
and Tillotson. is 

In 1672, not long after Dr. Addison's return 
from Tangier, his son Joseph w^s born. Of 
Joseph's childhood we know little. He learned 
his rudiments at schools in his father's neighbor- 
hood, and was then sent to the Charter House. 20 
The anecdotes which are popularly related about 
his boyish tricks do not harmonize very well with 
what we know of his riper years. There remains 
a tradition that he was the ringleader in a barring 
out, and another tradition that he ran away from 25 
school and hid himself in a wood, where he fed on 
berries and slept in a hollow tree, till after a long 
search he was discovered and brought home. If 
these stories be true, it would be carious to know 
by what moral discipline so mutinous and enter- 80 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 131 

prising a lad was transformed into the gentlest and 
most modest of men. 

We have abundant proof that, whatever Joseph's 
pranks may have been, he pursued his studies 

s vigorously and successfully. At fifteen he was 
not only fit for the university, but carried thither 
a classical taste and a stock of learning which 
would have done honor to a Master of Arts. He 
was entered at Queen's College, Oxford; but he 

10 had not been many months there when some of^his 
Latin verses fell by accident into the hands of Dr. 
Lancaster, Dean of Magdalene College. The 
young scholar's diction and versification were 
already such as veteran professors might envy. 

15 Dr. Lancaster was desirous to serve a boy of such 
promise; nor was an opportunity long wanting. 
The Revolution had just taken place; and nowhere 
had it been hailed with more delight than at 
Magdalene College. That great and opulent cor- 

20 poration had been treated by James and by his 
chancellor with an insolence and injustice which, 
even in such a prince and in such a minister, may 
justly excite amazement, and which had done 
more than even the prosecution of the bishops to 

35 alienate the Church of England from the throne. 
A president, duly elected, had been violently ex- 
pelled from his dwelling: a Papist had been set 
over the society by a royal mandate: the Fellows, 
who, in conformity with their oaths, had refused 

•¥> to submit to this usurper, had been driven forth 



132 MAC AULA Y'S ESSAYS 

from their quiet cloisters and gardens, to die of 
want or to live on charity. But the day of redress 
and retribution speedily came. The intruders were 
ejected : the venerable House was again inhabited 
by its old inmates: learning flourished under the o 
rule of the wise and virtuous Hough; and with 
learning was united a mild and liberal spirit too 
often wanting in the princely colleges of Oxford. 
In consequence of the troubles through which the 
society had passed, there had been no valid elec- lo 
tion of new members during the year 168.8. In 
1689, therefore, there was twice the ordinary num- 
ber of vacancies; and thus Dr. Lancaster found 
it easy to procure for his young friend admittance 
to the advantages of a foundation then generally i5 
esteemed the wealthiest in Europe. 

At Magdalene Addison resided during ten years. 
He was at first one of those scholars who are called 
Demies, but was subsequently elected a fellow. 
His college is still proud of his name ; his portrait 20 
still hangs in the hall ; and strangers are still told 
that his favorite walk was under the elms which 
fringe the meadow on the banks of the Cherwell. 
It is said, and is highly probable, that he was dis- 
tinguished among his fellow-students by the deli- 2s 
cacy of his feelings, by the shyness of his manners, 
and by the assiduity with which he often prolonged 
his studies far into the night. It is certain that 
his reputation for ability and learning stood high. 
Many years later the ancient doctors of Magdalene 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 133 

continued to talk in their common room of his 
boyish compositions, and expressed their sorrow 
that no copy of exercises so remarkable had been 
preserved. ' It is proper,' however, to remark that 

5 Miss Aikin has committed the error, very par- 
donable in a lady, of overrating Addison's classical 
attainments. In one department of learning, 
indeed, his proficiency was such as it is hardly pos- 
sible to overrate. His knowledge of the Latin 

10 poets, from Lucretius and Catullus down to Clau- 
dian and Prudeutius, was singularly exact and pro- 
found. He understood them thoroughly, entered, 
into their spirit, and had the finest and most 
discriminating perception of all their peculiarities 

15 of style and melody ; nay, he copied their manner 
with admirable skill, and surpassed, we think, all 
their British imitators who had preceded him, 
Buchanan and Milton alone excepted. This is high 
praise ; and beyond this w^e cannot with justice go. 

20 It is clear that Addison's serious attention during 
his residence at the university was almost entirely 
concentrated on Latin poetry, and that, if he did 
not wholly neglect other provinces of ancient 
literature, he vouchsafed to them only a cursory 

i5 glance. He does not appear to have attained more 
than an ordinary acquaintance with the political 
and moral writers of Rome; nor was his own 
Latin prose by any means equal to his Latin verse. 
His knowledge of Greek, though doubtless such as 

30 was in his time thought respectable at Oxford, was 



l34 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

evidently less than that which many lads now carry 
away every year from Eton and Rugby. A mi- 
nute examination of his works, if we had time to 
make such an examination, would fully bear out 
these remarks. We will briefly advert to a few of 5 
the facts on which our judgment is grounded. 

Great praise is due to the Notes which Addison 
appended to his version of the second and third 
books of the Metamorphoses. Yet those notes, 
while they show him to have been, in his own lo 
domain, an accomplished scholar, show also how 
confined that domain was. They are rich in 
apposite references to Virgil, Statins, and Clau- 
dian; but they contain not a single illustration 
drawn from the Greek poets. Now, if in the is 
whole compass of Latin literature there be a pas- 
sage which stands in need of illustration drawn 
from the Greek poets, it is the story of Pentheus in 
the third book of the Metamorphoses. Ovid was 
indebted for that story to Euripides and Theoc- 30 
ritus, both of whom he has sometimes followed 
minutely. But neither to Euripides nor to Theoc- 
ritus does Addison make the faintest allusion ; and 
we, therefore, believe that -we do not wrong him 
by supposing that he had little or no knowledge of 23 
their works. 

His travels in Italy, again, abound with classical 
quotations, happily introduced; but scarcely one 
of those quotations is in prose. He draws more 
illustrations from Ausonius and Manilius than from so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 135 

Cicero. Even his notions of the political and mili- 
tary affairs of the Romans seem to he derived from 
poets and poetasters. Spots made memorable by 
events which have changed the destinies of the 

5 world, and whicli have been worthily recorded by 
great historians, bring to his mind only scraps of 
some ancient versifier. In the gorge of the Apen- 
nines he naturally remembers the hardships which 
Hannibal's army endured, and proceeds to cite, 

10 not the authentic narrative of Poly bins, not the 
picturesque narrative of Livy, but the languid 
hexameters of Silius Italicus. On the banks of 
the Rubicon he never thinks of Plutarch's lively 
description, or of the stern conciseness of the 

15 Commentaries, or of those letters to Atticus which 

so forcibly express the alternations of hope and 

fear in a sensitive mind at a great crisis. His only 

authority for the events of the civil war is Lucan. 

All the best ancient works of art at Rome and 

20 Florence are Greek. Addison saw them, how- 
ever, without recalling one single verse of Pindar, 
of Callimachus, or of the Attic dramatists; but 
they brought to his recollection innumerable pas- 
sages of Horace, Juvenal, Statins, and Ovid. 

25 The same may be said of the Treatise oi« 
Medals. In that pleasing work we find about 
three hundred passages extracted with gTeat judg- 
ment from the Roman poets ; but we do not recol- 
lect' a single passage taken from any Roman orator 

30 or historian ; and we are confident that not a line 



136 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

is quoted from any Greek A^Titer. No person, who 
had derived all his information on the subject of 
medals from Addison, would suspect that the 
Greek coins were in historical interest equal, and 
in beauty of execution far superior, to those of t 
Rome. 

If it were necessary to find any further proof 
that Addison's classical knowledge was confined 
within narrow limits, that proof would be fur- 
nished by his Essay on the Evidences of Christi- lo 
anity. The Roman poets throw little or no light 
on the literary and historical questions which he is 
under the necessity of examining in that essay. 
He is, therefore, left completely in the dark; and 
it is melancholy to see how helplessly he gropes his is 
way from blunder to blunder. He assigns, as 
grounds for his religious belief, stories as absurd as 
that of the Cock-Lane ghost, and forgeries as rank 
as Ireland's A^ortigern; puts faith in the lie about 
the Thundering Legion; is convinced that Tiber- 20 
ins moved the senate to admit Jesus among the 
gods; and j^ronounces the letter of Agbarus, King 
of Edessa, to be a record of gi'eat authority. Nor 
were these errors the effects of superstition ; for to 
superstition Addison was by no means prone. The sh 
truth is, that he was writing about what he did not 
understand. 

Miss Aikin has discovered a letter from which it 
appears that, while Addison resided at Oxford, he 
was one of several writers whom the booksellers 3c 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 137 

engaged to make an English version of Herodotus; 
and she infers that he must have been a good 
Greek scholar. We can allow very little weight to 
this argument, when we consider that his fellow- 

5 laborers were to have been Boj^le and Blackmore. 
Boyle is remembered chiefly as the nominal author 
of the worst book on Greek history and philology 
that ever was printed ; and this book, bad as it is, 
Boyle was unable to produce without help. Of 

10 Blackmore's attainments in the ancient tongues, 
it may be sufficient to say that, in his prose, he has 
confounded an aphorism with an apophthegm, and 
that when, in his verse, he treats of classical sub- 
jects, his habit is to regale his readers with four 

15 false quantities to a page. 

It is probable that the classical acquirements of 
Addison were of as much service to him as if they 
had been more extensive. The world generally 
gives its admiration, not to the man who does 

20 what nobody else even attempts to do, but to the 

man who does best what multitudes do well. 

Bentley was so immeasurably superior to all the 

• other scholars of his time that few among them 

could discover his superiority. But the accom- 

25 plishment in which Addison excelled his contem- 
poraries was then, as it is now, highly valued and 
assiduously cultivated at all English seats of learn- 
ing. Everybody who had been at a public school 
had written Latin vei'ses ; many had written such 

30 verses with tolerable success, and were quite able 



138 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

to appreciate, though by no means aLle to rival, 
the skill with which Addison imitated Virgil. His 
lines on the Barometer and the Bowling Greer 
were applauded by hundi'eds, to whom the Disser- 
tation on the Epistles of Phalaris was as unintel- 5 
ligible as the hieroglyphics on an obelisk. 

Purity of style, and an easy flow of numbers, 
are common to all Addison's Latin poems. Om* 
favorite piece is the Battle of the Cranes and 
Pygmies; for in that piece we discern a. gleam of lo 
the fancy and humor which many years later 
enlivened thousands of breakfast-tables. Swift 
boasted that he v»^as never known to steal a hint ; 
and he certainly owed as little to his predecessors 
as any modern wi'iter. Y^et we cannat help sus- is 
pecting that he borrowed, perhaps unconsciously, 
one of the happiest touches in his Voyage of Lilli- 
put from Addison's verses. Let our readers judge. 

"The Emperor," says Gulliver, "is taller by 
about the breadth of my nail than any of his 20 
court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into 
the beholders." 

About thirty years before Gulliver's Travels 
appeared, Addison wrote these lines : — 

* ' Jamque acies inter medias sese arduus infert 25 

Pygmeadum ductor, qui, majestate verendus, 
Incessuqne gravis, reliquos supereminet omnes 
Mole gigantea, mediamque exsurgit in ulnam." 

The Latin poems of Addison were greatly and 
justly admired both at Oxford and Cambridge, 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 139 

before his name had ever been heard by the wits 
who thronged the coffee-houses round Drury-Lane 
Theatre. In his twenty-second year he ventured 
to appear before the public as a writer of English 
5 verse. He addressed some complimentary lines to 
Dry den, who, after many triumphs and many 
reverses, had at length reached a secure and lonely 
eminence among the literary men of that age. 
Dryden appears to have been much gratified by the 

10 young scholar's praise; and an interchange of 
civilities and good offices followed. Addison was 
probably introduced by , Dryden to Congreve, and 
was certainly presented by Congreve to Charles 
Montague, who was then Chancellor of the 

15 Exchequer, and leader of the Whig party in the 
House of Commons. 

At this time Addison seemed inclined to devote 
himself to poetry. He published a translation of 
part of the fourth Georgic, Lines to King 

20 William, and other performances of equal value; 
that is to say, of no value at all. But in those 
days, the public was in the habit of receiving with 
applause pieces which would now have little chance 
of obtaining the New di gate prize or the Seatonian 

^5 prize. And the reason is obvious. The heroic 
couplet was then the favorite measure. The art 
of arranging words in that measure, so that the 
lines may flow smoothly, that the accents may fall 
correctly,, that the rhymes may strike the ear 

80 strongly, and that there may be a pause at the end 



140 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

\ 
of every distich, is an art as mechanical as that of 
mending a kettle or shoeing a horse, and may be 
learned by any human being who has sense enough 
to learn anything. But, like other mechanical 
arts, it was gradually improved by means of many 5 
experiments and many failures. It was reserved 
for Pope to discover the trick, to make himself 
complete master of it, and to teach it to everybody 
else. From the time when his Pastorals appeared, 
heroic versification became matter of rule and com- lo 
pass; and, before long, all artists were on a level. 
Hundreds of dunces who never blundered on one 
happy thought or expression were able .to write 
reams of couplets which, as far as euphony was 
concerned, could not be distinguished from those 15 
of Pope himself, and which very clever writers of 
the reign of Charles the Second, — Rochester,- for 
Example, or Marvel, or Oldham, — would have con- 
'^emplated with admiring despair. 

Ben Jonson was a great man, Hoole a very 20 
small man. But Hoole, coming after Pope, had 
learned how to manufacture decasyllabic verses, 
and poured them forth by thousands and tens of 
thousands, all as well turned, as smooth, and as 
like each other as the blocks which have passed 25- 
through Mr. Brunei's mill in the dockyard at 
Portsmouth. Ben's heroic couplets resemble 
blocks rudely hewn out by an unpractised hand 
with a blunt hatchet. Take as a specimen his 
translation of a celebrated passage in the iEneid : — 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 141 

"This child our parent earth, stirred up with spite 
Of all the gods, brought forth, and, as some write. 
She was last sister of that giant race 
That sought to scale Jove's court, right swift of pace, 
5 And swifter far of wing, a monster vast 

And dreadful. Look, how many plumes are placed 
On her huge corpse, so many waking eyes 
Stick underneath, and, which may stranger rise 
In the report, as many tongues she wears." 

10 Compare with these jagged misshapen distichs 
the neat fabric which Hoole's machine produces in 
unlimited abundance. We take 'the first lines on 
which we open in his version of Tasso. They are 
neither better nor worse than the rest : — 

15 * "O thou, whoe'er thou art, whose steps are led, 
By choice or fate, these lonely shores to tread, 
No greater wonders east or west can boast 
Than yon small island on the pleasing coast. 
If e'er thy sight would blissful scenes explore, 

20 The current pass, and seek the further shore." 

Ever since the time of Pope there has been a 
glut, of lines of this sort; and we are now as little 
disposed to admire a man for being able to write 
them, as for being able to write his name. Bat in 

25 the days of William the Third such versification 
was rare; and a rhymer who had any skill in it 
passed for a great poet, just as in the dark ages a 
person who could write his name passed for a great 
clerk. Accordingly, Duke, Stepney, Granville, 

30 Walsh, and others whose only title to fame was 



142 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

that they said in tolerable metre what might have 
been as well said in prose, or what was not worth 
saying at all, were honored with marks of distinc- 
tion which ought to be reserved for genius. With 
these Addison must have ranked, if he had not 5 
earned true and lasting glory by performances 
which very little resembled his juvenile poems. 

Dry den was now busied with Virgil, and ob- 
tained from Addison a critical preface to the 
Georgics. In return for this service, and for 10 
other services of the same kind, the veteran poet, 
in the postscript to the translation of the ^neid, 
complimented his young friend with great liber- 
ality, and indeed with more liberality than sin- 
cerity. He affected to be afraid that his own 15 
performance would not sustain a comparison with 
the version of the fourth Georgic, by "the most 
ingenious Mr. Addison of Oxford." "After his 
bees," added Dryden, "my latter swarm is scarcely 
worth the hiving." 20 

The time had now arrived when it was necessary 
for Addison to choose a calling. Everything 
seemed to point his course towards the clerical pro- 
fession. His habits were regular, his opinions 
orthodox. His college had large ecclesiastical 25 
preferment in its gift, and boasts that it has given 
at least one bishop to almost every see in England. 
Dr. Lancelot Addison held an honorable place in 
the church, and had set his heart on seeing his 
son a clergyman. It is clear, from some expressions 3C 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 143 

in the young man's rhymes, that his intention was 
to take orders. But Charles Montague interfered. 
Montague had first brought himself into notice by 
verses, well-timed and not contemptibly written, 

5 but never, we think, rising above mediocrity. 
Fortunately for himself and for his country, he 
early quitted poetry, in which he could never have 
attained a rank as high as that of Dorset or Eoch- 
ester, and turned his mind to official and par- 

10 liamentary business. It is written that the 
ingenious person who undertook to instruct 
Kasselas, prince of Abyssinia, in the art of flying, 
ascended an eminence, waved his wings, sprang 
into the air, and instantly dropped into the lake. 

15 But it is added that the wings, which were unable 
to support him through the sky, bore him up 
effectually as soon as he was in the water. This 
is no bad type of the fate of Charles Montague, 
and of men like him. When he attempted to soar 

20 into the regions of poetical invention, he alto- 
gether failed; but, as soon as he had descended 
from that ethereal elevation into a lower and 
grosser element, his talents instantly raised him 
above the mass. He became a distinguished finan- 

25 cier, debater, courtier, and party leader. He still 
retained, his fondness for the pursuits of his early 
days ; but he showed that fondness not by wearying 
the public with his own feeble performances, but 
by discovering and encouraging literary excellence 

30 in others. A crowd of wits and poets, who would 



144 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

easily have vanquished him as a competitor, 
revered him as a judge and a patron. In his plans 
for the encouragement of learning, he was cor- 
dially supported by the ablest and most virtuous 
of his colleagues, the Lord Chancellor Somers. s 
Though both these great statesmen had a sincere 
love of letters, it was not solely from a love of 
letters that they were desirous to enlist youths of 
high intellectual qualifications in the public serv- 
ice. The Revolution had altered the whole sys- lo 
tem of government. Before that event the press 
had been controlled by censors, and the parliament 
had sat only two months in eight years. Now the 
press was free, and had begun to exercise unprece- 
dented influence on the public mind. Parliament i5 
met annually, and sat long. The chief power in 
the state had passed to the House of Commons. 
At such a conjuncture, it was natural that literary 
and oratorical talents should rise in value. There 
was danger that a government which neglected 20 
such talents might be subverted by them. It was, 
therefore, a profound and enlightened policy which 
led Montague and Somers to attach such talents to 
the Whig party, by the strongest ties both of inter- 
est and of gratitude. 25 

It is remarkable that, in a neighboring country, 
we have recently seen similar effects follow from 
similar causes. The Revolution of July 1830 
established representative government in France. 
The men of letters instantly rose to the highest im- 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 145 

portance in the state. At the present moment 
most of the persons whom we see at the head both 
of the Administration and of the Opposition, have 
been professors, historians, journalists, poets. The 

5 influence of the literary class in England, during 
the generation which followed the Revolution, was 
gr^at, but by no means so great ,as it has lately 
been in France. For, in England, the aristocracy 
of intellect had to contend with a powerful and 

10 deeply rooted aristocracy of a very different kind. 
France had no Somersets and Shrewsburies to keep 
down her Addisons and Priors. 

It was in the year 1699, when Addison had just 
completed his twenty-seventh year, that the course 

1^ of his life was finally determined. Both the great 

chiefs of the Ministry were kindly disposed 

towards him. In political opinions he already 

* was, what he continued to be through life, a firm, 

though a moderate Whig. He had addressed the 

20 most polished and vigorous of his early English 
lines to Somers, and had dedicated to Montague a 
Latin poem, truly Alrgilian, both in style and 
rhythm, on the peace of Ryswick. The wish of 
the young poet's great friends was, it should seem, 

25 to employ him in the service of the crown abroad. 
But an intimate knowledge of the French language 
was a qualification indispensable to a diplomatist ; 
and this qualification Addison had not acquired. 
It was, therefore, thought desirable that he should 

30 pass some time on the Continent in prepai'ing him- 



146 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

self for official employment. His own means were 
not such as would enable him to travel ; but a pen- 
sion of three hundred pounds a year was procured 
for him by the interest of the Lord Chancellor. 
It seems to have been apprehended that some diffi- 5 
culty might be started by the rulers of Magdalene 
College. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
wrote in the strongest terms to Hough. The state 
—such was the purport of Montague's letter — 
could not, at that time, spare to the church such lo 
a man as Addison. Too many high civil posts 
were already occupied by adventurers, who, desti- 
tute of every liberal art and sentiment, at once 
pillaged and disgraced the country which they pre- 
tended to serve. It had become necessary to is 
recruit for the public service from a very different 
class, from that class of which Addison was the 
representative. 'The close of the Minister's letter 
was remarkable. "I am called," he said, *'an 
enemy of the church. But I will never do it any 20 
other injury than keeping Mr. Addison out of it." 
This interference was successful; and, in the 
summer of 1699, Addison, made a rich man by his 
pension, and still retaining his fellowship, quitted 
his beloved Oxford, and set out on his travels. He 25 
crossed from Dover to Calais, proceeded to Paris, 
and was received there with great kindness and 
politeness by a kinsman of his friend Montague, 
Charles Earl of Manchester, who had just been 
appointed Ambassador to the Court of France. 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 147 



The countess, a Whig and a toast, was probably as 
gracious as her lord ; for Addison long retained an 
agreeable recollection of the impression which she 
at this time made on him, and, in some lively 

5 lines written on the glasses of the Kit Cat Club, 
described the envy whicli her cheeks, glowing with 
the genuine bloom of England, had excited among 
the painted beauties of Versailles. 

Louis the Fourteenth was at this time expiating 

10 the vices of his youth by a devotion which had no 
root in reason, and bore no fruit of charity. The 
servile literature of France had changed its charac- 
ter to suit the changed character of the prince. 
No book appeared that had not an air of sanctity. 

15 Racine, who was just dead, had passed the close of 
his life in writing sacred dramas ; and Dacier was 
seeking for the Athanasian mysteries in Plato. 
Addison described this state of things in a short 
but lively and gi'aceful lette^r to Montague. 

20 Another letter, written about the same time to the 
Lord Chancellor, conveyed the strongest assurances 
of gratitude and attachment. "The only return I 
can make to your Lordship," said Addison, "will 
be to apply myself entirely to my business." 

25 With this view he quitted Paris and repaired to 
Blois, a place where it was supposed that the 
French language was spoken in its highest purity, 
and where not a single Englishman conld be 
found. Here he passed some months pleasantly 

30 and profitably. Of his way of life at Blois, one of 



148 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

his associates, an abbe named Philippeaiix, gave an 
account to Joseph Sjpence. If this account is to 
be trusted, Addison studied much, mused much, 
talked little, had fits of absence, and either had no 
love affairs, or was too discreet to confide them to 5 
the abbe. A man who, even when surrounded by 
fellow-countrymen and fellow-students, had always 
been remarkably shy and silent, was not likely to 
be loquacious in a foreign tongue, and among for- 
eign companions. But it is clear from Addison's lo 
letters, some of which were long after published in 
the Guardian, that, while he appeared to be ab- 
sorbed in his own meditations, he was really 
observing French society with that keen and sly, 
yet not ill-natured side-glance, which was pecul- is 
iarly his own. 

From Blois he returned to Paris ; and, having 
now mastered the French language, found great 
pleasure in the society of French philosophers and 
poets. He gave an account in a letter to Bishop 2c 
Hough, of two highly interesting conversations, 
one with Malebranche, the other with Boileau. 
Malebranche expressed great partiality for the Eng- 
lish, and extolled the genius of Newton, but shook 
his head when Hobbes was mentioned, and was 25 
indeed so unjust as to call the author of the 
Leviathan a poor silly creature, Addison's mod- 
esty restrained him from fully relating, in his 
lettei^, the circumstances of his introduction to 
Boileau. Boileau, having survived the friends 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 149 

and rivals of his youth, old, deaf, and melancholy, 
lived in retirement, seldom went either to Court or 
to the Academy, and was almost inaccessible to 
strangers. Of the English and of English liter- 

5 ature he knew nothing. He had hardly heard the 
name of Dryden. Some of our countrymen, in the 
warmth of their patriotism, have asserted that this 
ignorance must have been affected. We own that 
tve see no ground for such a supposition. English 

10 literature was to the French of the age of Louis 
the Fourteenth what German literature was to our 
own grandfathers. Very few, we suspect, of the ac- 
complished men who, sixty or seventy years ago, 
used to dine in Leicester Square with Sir Joshua, 

15 or at Streatham with Mrs. Thrale, had the slight- 
est notion that Wieland was one of the first wits 
and poets, and Lessing, beyond all dispute, the 
first critic in Europe. Boileau knew just as little 
about the Paradise Lost and about Absalom and 

20 Achitophel; but he had read Addison's Latin 
poems, and admired them greatly. They had 
given him, he said, quite a new notion of the state 
of learning and taste among the English. John- 
son will have it that these praises were insincere. 

25 "Nothing," says he, "is better known of Boileau 
than that he had an injudicious and peevish con- 
tempt of modern Latin ; and therefore his profes- 
sion of regard was probably the effect of his civility 
rather than approbation." Now, nothing is better 

80 known of Boileau than that he was singularly 



150 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

sparing of compliments. We do not remember 
that either friendship or fear ever induced him to 
bestow praise on any composition which he did not 
approve. On literary questions, his caustic, dis- 
dainful, and self-confident spirit rebelled against 
that authority to which everything else in France 
bowed down. He had the spirit to tell Louis the 
Fourteenth firmly and even rudely, that his maj- 
esty knew nothing about poetry, and admired 
verses which were detestable. What was there in 
Addison's position that could induce the satirist, 
whose stern and fastidious temper had been the 
dread of two generations, to turn sycophant for the 
first and last time? Nor was Boileau's contempt 
of modern Latin either injudicious or peevish. 
He thought, indeed, that no poem of the first 
order would ever be written in a dead language. 
And did he think amiss? Has not the experience 
of centuries confirmed his opinion? Boileau also 
thought it probable that, in the best modern 
Latin, a wi'iter of the Augustan age would have 
detected ludicrous improprieties. And who can 
think otherwise? What modern scholar can 
honestly declare that he sees the smallest impurity 
in the style of Livy? Yet is it not certain that, 
in the style of Livy, Pollio, whose taste had been 
formed on the banks of the Tiber, detected the 
inelegant idiom of the Po? Has any modern 
scholar understood Latin better than Frederic the 
Great understood French? Yet is it not notorious 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 151 

that Frederic the Great, after reading, speaking, 
writing French, and nothing but French, during 
more than half a century, after unlearning his 
mother tongue in order to learn French, after liv- 

5 ing familiarly during many years with French 
associates, could not, to the last, compose in 
French, without imminent risk of committing 
some mistake which would have moved a smile in 
the literary circles of Paris? Do we believe that 

10 Erasmus and Fracastorius wrote Latin as well as 
Dr. Eobertson and Sir Walter Scott wrote Eng- 
lish? And are there not in the Dissertation on In- 
dia, the last of Dr. Robertson's works, in AVaverley, 
in Marmion, Scotticisms at which a Loudon 

15 apprentice would laugh? But does it follow, 
because we think thus, that we can find nothing to 
admire in the noble alcaics of Gray, or in the play- 
ful elegiacs of Vincent Bourne? Surely not. Nor 
was Boileau so ignorant or tasteless as to be incapa- 

80 ble of appreciating good modern Latin. In the 
very letter to wliich Johnson alludes, Boileau says, 
"Ne croyez pas pourtant que je veuille par la 
blamer les vers Latins que vous m'avez envoy es 
d'un de vos illustres academiciens. Je' les ai 

85 trouves fort beaux, et digues de Vida et de San- 
nazar, mais non pas d'Horace et de Virgile." 
Several poems in modern Latin have been praised 
by Boileau quite as liberally as it was his habit to 
praise anything. He says, for example, of the 

so Pere Fraguier's epigrams, that Catullus seems to 



152 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

have come to life again. But the best proof that 
Boileau did not feel the undiscerning contempt for 
modern Latin verses which has been imputed to 
him, is that he wrote and published Latin verses 
in several metres. Indeed, it happens, curiously 5 
enough, that the most severe censure ever pro- 
nounced by him on modern Latin is conveyed in 
Latin hexameters. We allude to the fragment 
which begins : — 

"Quid numeris iterura me balbutire Latinis, 10 

Longe Alpes citra natum de patre Sicambro, 
Musa, jubes? " 

For these reasons we feel assured that the praise 
which Boileau bestowed on the Machince Gesticul- 
antes^ and the Gera7io-PygmceomacMa^ was is 
sincere. He certainly opened himself to Addison 
with a freedom which was a sure indication of 
esteem. Literature was the chief subject of con- 
versation. The old man talked on his favorite 
theme much and well, — indeed, as his young 20 
hearer thought, incompa^'ably well. Boileau had 
undoubtedly some of the qualities of a great critic. 
He wanted imagination ; but he had strong sense. 
His literary code was formed on narrow principles ; 
but in applying it he showed great judgment and 2n 
penetration. In mere style, abstracted from the 
ideas of which style is the garb, his taste was 
excellent. He was well acquainted with the great 
Greek writers, and, though unable fully to appreci- 
ate their creative, genius, admired the majestic 3c 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 153 

simplicity of their manner, and had learned from 
them to despise bombast and tinsel. It is easy, we 
think, to discover in the Spectator and the Guard- 
ian traces of the influence, in part salutary and 

5 in part pernicious, which the mind of Boileau had 
5n the mind of Addison. 

While Addison was at Paris, an event took 
place which made that capital a disagreeable 
residence for an Englishman and a Whig. 

10 Charles, second of the name, King of Spain, died, 
and bequeathed his dominions to Philip, Duke of 
Anjou, a younger son of the Dauphin. The Kiug 
of France, in direct violation of his engagements, 
both with Great Britain and with the States 

15 General, accepted the bequest on behalf of his 
grandson. The house of Bourbon was at the sum- 
mit of human grandeur. England had been out- 
witted, and found herself in a situation at once 
degrading and perilous. The people of France, 

20 not presaging the calamities by which they were 
destined to expiate the perfidy of their sovereign, 
went mad with pride and delight. Every man 
looked as if a gi-eat estate had just been left him. 
"The French conversation," said Addison, "begins 

25 to grow insupportable; that which was before the 
vainest nation in the world, is now worse than 
ever." Sick of the arrogant exultation of the 
Parisians, and probably foreseeing that the peace 
between France and England could not be of long 

so duration, he set off for Italy. 



154 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

In December, 1700, he embarked at Marseilles, 
As lie glided along the Ligurian coast, he was 
delighted by the sight of myrtles and olive-trees, 
^hich retained their verdure nnder the winter 
solstice. Soon, however, he encountered one of 5 
the black storms of the Mediterranean. The 
captain of the ship gave up all for lost, and con- 
fessed himself to a capuchin who happened to be 
on board. The English heretic, in the meantime, 
fortified himself against the terrors of death with lo 
devotions of a very different kind. How strong an 
impression this perilous voyage made on him 
appears from the ode, "How are thy servants 
blest, Lord!" which was long after published in 
the Spectator. After some days of discomfort and is 
danger, Addison was glad to land at Savona, and 
to make his way, over mountains where no road 
had yet been hewn out by art, to the city of 
Genoa. 

At Genoa, still ruled by her own doge, and by 20 
the nobles whose names were inscribed on her 
Book of Gold, Addison made a short stay. He 
admired the narrow streets overhung by long lines 
of towering palaces, the walls rich with frescoes, 
the gorgeous temple of the Annunciation, and the 35 
tapestries whereon were recorded the long glories 
of the house of Doria. Thence he hastened to 
Milan, where he contemplated the Gothic magnifi- 
cence of the cathedral with more wonder than 
pleasure. He passed Lake Benacus while a gale so 



LIFE .\.ND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 155 

was blowing, and saw the waves raging as they 
raged when Virgil looked upon them. At Venice, 
then the gayest spot in Europe, the traveller spent 
the Carnival, the gayest season of the year, in the 

5 mi [st of masks, dances, and serenades. Here he 
was at once diverted and provoked by the absurd 
dramatic pieces which then disgi'aced the Italian 
stage. To one of those pieces, however, he was 
indebted for a valuable hint. He was present 

10 when a ridiculous play on the death of Cato was 
performed. Cato, it seems, was in love with a 
daughter of Scipio. The lady had given her heart 
to Csesar. The rejected lover determined to de- 
stroy himself. He appeared seated in his library, a 

15 dagger in his hand, a Plutarch and a Tasso before 
him; and, in this position, he pronounced a 
soliloquy before he struck the blow. We are sur- 
prised that so remarkable a circumstance as this 
should have escaped the notice of all Addison's 

20 biographers. There cannot, we conceive, be the 
smallest doubt that this scene, in spite of its ab- 
surdities and anachronisms, struck the traveller's 
imagination, and suggested to him the thought of 
bringing Cato on the English stage. It is well 

25 known that about this time he began his tragedy, 
and that he finished the first four acts before he 
returned to England. 

On his way from Venice to Rome, he was drawn 
some miles out of the beaten road by a wish to see 

30 the smallest independent state in Europe. On a 



156 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

rock where the snow still lay, though the Italian 
spring was now far advanced, was perched the 
little fortress of San Marino. The roads which 
led to the secluded town were so bad that few 
travellers had ever visited it, and none had ever s 
published an account of it. Addison could not 
suppress a good-natured smile at the simple man- 
ners and institutions of this singular community. 
But he observed, with the exultation of a Whig, 
that the rude mountain tract which formed the lo 
territory of the republic swarmed with an honest, 
healthy, and contented peasantry, while the rich 
plain which surrounded the metropolis of civil and 
spiritual t3rranny was scarcely less desolate than 
the uncleared wilds of America. 15 

At Rome Addison remained on his first visit only 
long enough to catch a glimpse of St. Peter's and 
of the Pantheon. His haste is the more extra- 
ordinary because the Holy Week was close at hand. 
He has given no hint which can enable us to pro- 20 
nounce why he chose to fly from a spectacle which 
every year allures from distant regions persons of 
far less taste and sensibility than his. Possibly, 
travelling, as he did, at the charge of a government 
distinguished by its enmity to the Church of 25 
Eome, he may have thought that it would be im- 
prudent in him to assist at the most magnificent 
rite of that church. Many eyes would be upon 
him, and he might find it difficult to behaVe in 
such a manner as to give offence neither to his so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 157 

patrons in England, nor to those among whom he 
resided. Whatever his motives may have been, he- 
turned his back on the most august and affecting 
ceremony which is known among men, and posted 

5 along the Appian way to Naples. 

Naples was then destitute of what are now, per- 
haps, its chief attractions. The lovely bay and the 
awful mountain were indeed there; but a farm- 
house stood on the theatre of Herculaneum, and 

10 rows of vines grew over the streets of Pompeii. 
The temples of Paestum had not indeed been hid- 
den from the eye of man by any great convulsion 
of nature ; but, strange to say, their existence was 
a secret even to artists and antiquaries. Though 

15 situated within a few hours' journey of a great 
capital, where Salvator had not long before 
painted, and where Vico was then lecturing, those 
noble remains were as little known to Europe as 
the ruined cities overgrown by the forests of Yuca- 

20 tan. What was to be seen at Naples Addison saw. 
He climbed Vesuvius, explored the tunnel of 
Posilipo, and wandered among the vines and 
almond-trees of Cai^reae. But neither the wonders 
of nature, nor those of art, could so occupy his 

25 attention as to prevent him from noticing, though 
cursorily, the abuses of the government and the 
misery of the people. The great kingdom which 
had just descended to Philip the Fifth, was in a 
state of paralytic dotage. Even Castile and Ara- 

80 gon were sunk in wretchedness. Yet, compared 



158 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

with tke Italian dependencies of the Spanish 
crown, Castile and Aragon might be called pros- 
perous. It is clear that all the observations which 
Addison made in Italy tended to confirm him in 
the political opinions which he had adopted at s 
home. To the last he always spoke of foreign 
travel as the best cure for Jacobitism. In his 
Freeliolder the Tory fox-hunter asks what travel- 
ling is good for, except to teach a man to jabber 
French and to talk against passive obedience. i& 

From Naples, Addison returned to Eome by sea, 
along the coast which his favorite Virgil had cele- 
brated. The felucca passed the headland where 
the oar and trumpet were placed by the Trojan 
adventurers on the tomb of Misenus, and anchored 15 
at night under the shelter of the fabled promontory 
of Circe. The voyage ended in the Tiber, still 
overhung with dark verdure, and still turbid with 
yellow sand, as when it met the eyes of ^neas. 
From the ruined port of Ostia, the stranger hur- 20 
ried to Eome ; and at Eome he remained during 
those hot and sickly months, when, even in the 
Augustan age, all who could make their escape fled 
from mad dogs and from streets black with funer- 
als, to gather the first figs of the season in the 25 
country. It is probable that, when he, long after, 
poured forth in verse his gratitude to the Provi- 
dence which had enabled him to breathe unhurt 
in tainted air, he was thinking of the August and 
September which he passed at Eome. 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 159 

It was not till the latter end of October that he 
tore himself away from the masterpieces of ancient 
and modern art which are collected in the city so 
long the mistress of the world. He then journeyed 

5 northward, passed through Sienna, and for a 
moment forgot his prejudices in favor of classic 
architecture as he looked on the magnificent 
cathedral. At Florence he spent some days with 
the Duke of Shrewsbury, who, cloyed with the- 

10 pleasures of ambition, and impatient of its pains, 
fearing both parties, and loving neither, had deter- 
mined to hide in an Italian retreat talents and 
accomplishments which, if they had been united 
with fixed principles and civil courage, might have 

15 made him the foremost man of his age. These 
days, we are told, passed pleasantly ;' and we can 
easily believe it. For Addison was a delightful 
companion when he was at his ease ; and the duke, 
though he seldom' forgot that he was a Talbot, had 

20 the invaluable art of putting at ease all who came 
near him. 

Addison gave some time to Florence, and espe- 
cially to the sculptures in the Museum, which he 
preferred even to those of the Vatican. He then 

25 pursued his journey through a country in which 
the ravages of the last war were still discernible, 
and in which all men were looking forward with 
dread to a still fiercer conflict. Eugene had 
already descended from the Rheetian Alps, to dis- 

60 pute with Catinat the rich plain of Lombardy. 



160 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

The faithless ruler of Savoy was still reckoned 
among the allies of Louis. England had not yet 
actually declared war against France: but Man- 
chester had left Paris ; and the negotiations which 
produced the Grand Alliance against the house of 5 
Bourbon were in progress. Under such circum- 
stances, it was desirable for an English traveller to 
reach neutral ground without delay. Addison 
resolved to cross Mont Cenis. It was December; 
and the road was very different from that which lo 
now reminds the stranger of the power and genius 
of Napoleon. The winter, however, was mild; 
and the passage was, for those times, easy. To 
this Journey Addison alluded when, in the ode 
which we have already quoted, he said that for is 
him the Divine goodness had warmed the hoary 
Alpine hills. 

It was in the midst of the eternal snow that he 
composed his Epistle to his friend Montague, now 
Lord Halifax. That Epistle, once widely re- 20 
nowned, is now known only to curious readers, and 
will hardly be considered by those to whom it is 
known as in any perceptible degree heightening 
Addison's fame. It is, however, decidedly superior 
to any English composition which he had previously 23 
published. Nay, we think it quite as good as any 
poem in heroic metre which appeared during the 
interval between the death of Dryden and the 
publication of the Essay on Criticism. It con- 
tains passages as good as the second-rate passages so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 161 

of Pope, and would have added to the reputation 
of Parnell or Prior. 

But, whatever be the literary merits or defects of 
the Epistle, it undoubtedly does honor to the prin- 

5 ciples and spirit of the author. Halifax had now 
nothing to give. He had fallen from power, had 
been held up to obloquy, had been impeached by 
the House of Commons, and, though his peers had 
dismissed the impeachment, had, as it seemed, 

10 little chance of ever again filling high office. The 
Epistle, written at such a time, is one among many 
proofs that there was no mixture of cowardice or 
meanness in the suavity and moderation which dis- 
tinguished Addison from all the other public men 

15 of those stormy times. 

At Geneva, the traveller learned that a partial 
change of ministry had taken place in England, and 
that the Earl of Manchester had become Secretary of 
State. Manchester exerted himself to serve his 

20 young friend. It was thought advisable that an 
English agent should be near the person of Eugene 
in Italy; and Addison, whose diplomatic education 
was now finished, was the man selected. He was 
preparing to enter on his honorable functions, 

25 when all his prospects were for a time darkened by 
the death of William the Third. 

Anne had long felt a strong aversion, personal, 
political, and religious, to the Whig party. That 
aversion appeared in the first measures of her 

JO reign. Manchester was deprived of the 



162 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

after he had held them only a few weeks. Neither 
Somers nor Halifax was sworn of the Privy Coun- 
cil. Addison shared the fate of his three patrons. 
His hopes of employment in the public service 
were at an end; his pension was stopped; and it & 
was necessary for him to support himself by his 
own exertions. He became tutor to a young Eng- 
lish traveller, and appears to have rambled with 
his pupil over great part of Switzerland and Ger- 
many. At this time he wrote his pleasing treatise lo 
on Medals. It was not published till after his 
death ; but several distinguished scholars saw the 
manuscript, and gave just praise to the grace of the 
style, and to the learning and ingenuity evinced by 
the quotations. «5 

From Germany, Addison repaired to Holland, ■ 
where he learned the melancholy news of his • 
father's death. After passing some months in the 
United Provinces, he returned about the close of j 
the year 1703 to England. He was there cordially gj 
received by his friends, and introduced by them 
into the Kit Oat Club, a society in which were col- 
lected all the various talents and accomplishments 
which then gave lustre to the Whig party. 

Addison was, during some mouths after his 25 
return from the Continent, hard pressed by pecun- 
iary difficulties. But it was soon in the power of 
his noble patrons to serve him effectually. A 
political change, silent and gradual, but of the 
highest importance, was in daily progress. The 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 163 

accession of Anne had been hailed by the Tories 
with transports of joy and hope ; and for a time it 
seemed that the Whigs had fallen never to rise 
again. The throne was surrounded by men sup- 

5 posed to be attached to the prerogative and to the 

church; and among these none stood so high in 

the favor of the sovereign as the Lord-Treasurer 

Godolphin and the Captain-General Marlborough. 

The country gentlemen and country clergymen 

10 had f Lilly expected that the policy of these min- 
isters would be directly opposed to that which had 
been almost constantly followed by William; that 
the landed interest would be favored at the expense 
of trade ; that no additions would be made to the 

15 funded debt; that the privileges conceded to 
Dissenters by the late king would be curtailed, if 
not withdrawn ; that the war with France, if there 
must be such a war, would, on our part, be almost 
enthely naval; and that the government would 

20 avoid close connections with foreign powers, and, 
above all, with Holland. 

But the country gentlemen and country clergy- 
men were fated to be deceived, not for the last 
time. The prejudices and passions which raged 

25 without control in vicarages, in cathedral closes, 
and in the manor-houses of fox-hunting squires, 
were not shared by the chiefs of the ministry. 
Those statesmen saw that it was both for the pub- 
lic interest, and for their own interest, to adopt a 

30 Whig policy, at least as respected the alliances of 



164 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS 

the country and the conduct of the war. But, if 
the foreign j^olicy of the AVhigs were adopted, it 
was impossible to abstain from adopting also their 
financial policy. The natural consequences fol- 
lowed. The rigid Tories were alienated from the 5 
government. The votes of the Whigs became nec- 
essary to it. The votes of the Whigs could be 
secured only by further concessions"; and further 
concessions the Queen was induced to make. 

At the beginning of the year 1 704, the state of 10 
parties bore a close analogy to the state of parties 
in 1826. In 1826, as in 1704, there was a Tory 
ministry divided into two hostile sections. The 
position of Mr. Canning and his friends in 1826 
corresponded to that which Marlborough and 15 
Godolphin occupied in 1704. Nottingham and 
Jersey were in 1704 what Lord Eldon and Lord 
Westmoreland were in 1826. The Whigs of 1704 
were in a situation resembling that in which the 
Whigs of 1826 stood. In 1704, Somers, Halifax, 20 
Sunderland, Cowper, were not in office. There 
was no avowed coalition between them and the 
moderate Tories. It is probable that no direct 
communication tending to such a coalition had 
yet taken place ; yet all men saw that such a coali- 25 
tion was inevitable, nay, that it was already half 
formed. Such, or nearly such, was the state of 
things when tidings arrived of the great battle 
fought at Blenheim on the 13th August, 1704. 
By the Whigs the news was hailed with transports 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 165 

of joy and pride. No fault, no cause of quarrel, 
could be remembered by them against the com- 
mander whose genius had, in one day, changed the 
face of Europe, saved the Imperial throne, hum- 
5 bled the house of Bourbon, and secured the Act of 
Settlement against foreign hostility. The feeling 
of the Tories was very different. They could not 
indeed, without imprudence, openly express regret 
at an event so glorious to their country ; but their 
10 congratulations were so cold and sullen as to give deep 
disgust to the victorious general and his friqnfds. 

Godolphin was not a reading man. Whatever 
time he could spare from business he was in the 
habit of spending at Newmarket or at the card- 
^5 table. But he was not absolutely indifferent to 
poetry ; and he was too intelligent an observer not 
to perceive that literature was a formidable engine 
of political warfare, and that the great Whig leaders 
had strengthened their party and raised their char- 
so acter by extending a liberal and jadicious patronage 
to good writers. He was mortified, and not with- 
out reason, by the exceeding badness of the poems 
which appeared in honor of the battle of Blenheim. 
One of those poems has been rescued from oblivion 
25 by the exquisite absurdity of three lines : — 

"Think of two thousand gentlemen at least, 
And each man mounted on his capering beast ; 
Into the Danube they were pushed by shoals." 

Where to procure better verses the treasurer did 
30 not know. He understood how to negotiate a 



166 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

loan, or remit a subsidy ; he was also well versed in 
the history of running horses and fighting cocks ; 
but his acquaintance among the poets was very 
small. He consulted Halifax ; but Halifax affected 
to decline the office of adviser. He had, he said, 5 
done his best, when he had power, to encourage 
men whose abilities and acquirements might do 
honor to their country. Those times were over. 
Other maxims had prevailed. Merit was suffered 
to pine in obscurity ; and the public money was lo 
squandered on the undeserving. "I do Icnow," 
he added, "a gentleman who would celebrate the 
battle in a manner worthy of the subject, but I^ 
will not name him." Godolphin, who was an 
expert at the soft answer which" turneth away 75 
wrath, and who was under the necessity of paying 
court to the Whigs, gently replied that there was 
too much ground for Halifax's complaints, but 
that what was amiss should in time be rectified, 
and that in the meantime the services of a man 20 
such as Halifax had described should be liberally 
rewarded. Halifax then mentioned Addison; 
but, mindful of the dignity as well as of the 
pecuniary interest of his friend, insisted that the 
minister should apply in the most courteous man- 25 
ner to Addison himself ; and this Godolphin prom- 
ised to do. 

Addison then occupied a garret up three pair 
of stairs, over a small shop in the Hay market. In 
this humble lodging he was surprised, on the so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 167 

morning which followed the conversation between 
Goclolphin and Halifax, by a visit from no less a 
person than the Eight Honorable Hem-y Boyle, 
then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and afterwards 

5 Lord Carleton. This high-born minister had been 

* sent by the Lord-Treasurer as ambassador to the 
needy poet. Addison readily undertook the pro- 
posed task, a task which, to so good a Whig, was 
probably a pleasure. When the poem was little 

10 more than half finished, he showed it to Godol- 
phin, who was delighted with it, and particularly 
with the famous similitude of the Angel. Addison 
was instantly appointed to a commissionership 
worth about two hundred pounds a year, and was 

15 assured that this appointment was only an earnest 
of greater favors. 

The Campaign came forth, and was as much 
admired by the public as by the minister. It 
pleases us less on the whole than the Epistle to 

20 Halifax. Yet it undoubtedly ranks high among 
the poems which appeared during the interval 
between the death of Dryden and the dawn of 
Pope's genius. The chief merit of the Campaign, 
we think, is that which was noticed by Johnson, 

25 the manly and rational rejection of fiction. The 
first great poet whose works have come down to us 
sang of war long before war became a science or a 
trade. If, in his time, there was enmity between 
two little Greek towns, each poured forth its 

30 crowd of citizens, ignorant of discipline, and 



168 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

armed with implements of labor rudely turned into 
weapons. On each side appeared conspicuous a 
few chiefs, whose wealth had enabled them to pro- 
cure good armor, horses, and chariots, and whose 
leisure had enabled them to practise military exer- 5 
cises. One such chief, if he were a man of great 
strength, agility, and courage, would probably be 
more formidable than twenty common men ; and 
the force and dexterity with which he flung his 
spear might have no inconsiderable share in decid- 10 
ing the event of the day. Such were probably the 
battles with which Homer was familiar. But 
Homer related the actions of men of a former 
generation, of men who sprang from the gods, and 
communed with the gods face to face ; of men, one 15 
of whom could with ease hurl rocks which two 
sturdy hinds of a later period would be unable even 
to lift. He therefore naturally represented their 
martial exploits as resembling in kind, but far sur- 
passing in magnitude, those of the stoutest and 20 
most expert combatants of his own age. Achilles, 
clad in celestial armor, di'awn by celestial coursers, 
grasping the spear which none but himself could 
raise, driving all Troy and Lycia before him, and 
choking Scamander with dead, was only a magnifi- 25 
cent exaggeration of the real hero, whcr, strong, 
fearless, accustomed to the use of weapons, guarded 
by a shield and helmet of the best Sidonian fabric, 
and whirled along by horses of Thessalian breed, 
struck down with his own right arm, foe after foe. 30 



LIFE > AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 169 

In all rude societies similar notions are found. 

r There are at this day countries where the Life- 
guardsman Shaw Avould be considered as a much 
greater warrior than the Duke of Wellington. 
5 Bonaparte loved to describe the astonishment with 
which the Mamelukes looked at his diminutive 
figure. Mourad Bey, distinguished above all his 
fellows by his bodily strength, and by the skill 
with which he managed his horse and his sabre, 

10 could not believe that a man who was scarcely five 
feet high, and rode like a butcher, could be the 
greatest soldier in Europe. 

Homer's descriptions of war had therefore as 
much truth as poetry requires. But truth was 

15 altogether wanting to the performances of those 
who, writing about battles which had scarcely any- 
thing in common with the battles of his times, 
servilely imitated his manner. The folly of Silius 
Italicus, in particular, is positively nauseous. He 

20 undertook to record in verse the vicissitudes of a 
great struggle betAveen generals of the first order; 
and his narrative is made up of the hideous wounds 
which these generals inflicted with their own 
hands. Asdrubal flings a spear, which gi-azes the 

25 shoulder of the consul Nero ; but Nero sends his 
spear into Asdrubal 's side. Fabius sla3^s Thuris 
and Butes and Maris and Arses, and the long- 
haired Adherbes, and the gigantic Thylis, and 
Sapharus and Mongesus, and the trumpeter Mor- 

30 inus. Hannibal runs Perusinus through the groin 



170 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

with a stake, and breaks the backbone of Telesinns 
with a huge stone. This detestable fashion was 
copied in modern times, and continued to prevail 
down to the age of Addison. Several versifiers 
had described William turning thousands to flight 5 
by his single prowess, and dyeing the Boyne with 
Irish blood. Nay, so estimable a writer as John 
Philips, the author of the Splendid Shilling, repre- 
sented Marlborough as having won the battle of 
Blenheim merely by strength of muscle and skill in lo 
fence. The following lines may serve as an 
example : — 

"Churchill, viewing where 
The violence of Tallard most prevailed, 
Came to oppose his slaughtering arm. With speed 15 
Precipitate he rode, urging his way 
O'er hills of gasping heroes, and fallen steeds 
Rolling in death. Destruction, grim with blood, 
Attends his furious course. Around his head 
The glowing balls play innocent, while he 20 

With dire impetuous sway deals fatal blows 
Among the flying Gauls. In Gallic blood 
He dyes his reeking sword, and strews the ground 
With headless ranks. What can they do? Or how 
Withstand his wide-destroying sword?" 25 

Addison, with excellent sense and taste, 
departed from this ridiculous fashion. He 
reserved his praise for the qualities which made 
Marlborough truly great, — energy, sagacity, mili- 
tary science. But, above all, the poet extolled the so 
firmness of that mind which, in the midst of con- 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 171 

fusion, uproar, and slaughter, examined and dis- 
posed everything with the serene wisdom of a 
higher intelligence. 

Here it was that he introduced the famous com- 

5 parison of Marlborough to an Angel guiding the 
whirlwind. We will not dispute the general jus- 
tice of Johnson's remarks on this passage. But 
we must point out one circumstance which appears 
to have escaped all the critics. The extraordinary 

10 effect which this simile produced when it first 
appeared, and which to the following generation 
seemed inexplicable, is doubtless to be chiefly 
attributed to a line which most readers now 
regard as a feeble parenthesis : — 

15 "Such as, of late, o'er pale Britannia passed." 

Addison spoke, not of a storm, but of the storm. 
The great tempest of November, 1703, the only 
tempest which in our latitude has equalled the 

20 rage of a tropical hurricane, had left a dreadful 
recollection in the minds of all men. No other 
tempest was ever in this country the occasion of a 
parliamentary addi'ess or of a public fast. Whole 
fleets had been cast away. Large mansions had 

25 been blown down. One prelate had been buried 
beneath the ruins of his palace. London and Bris- 
tol had presented the appearance of cities just 
sacked. Hundreds of families were still in mourn- 
ing. The prostrate trunks of large trees, and the 

30 ruins of houses, still attested, in all the southern 



172 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

counties, the fury of the blast. The popularity 
which the simile of the Angel enjoyed among 
Addison's contemporaries, has always seemed to us 
to be a remarkable instance of the advantage 
which, in rhetoric and poetry, the particular has 5 
over the general. 

Soon after the Campaign, was published Addi- 
son's Narrative of his Travels in Italy. The first 
effect produced by this narrative was disappoint- 
ment. The crowd of readers who expected politics lo 
and scandal, speculations on the projects of Victor 
Amadeus, and anecdotes about the jollities of con- 
vents and amours of cardinals and nuns, were con- 
founded by finding that the writer's mind was 
much more occupied by the war between the is 
Trojans and Eutulians than by the war between 
France and Austria ; and that he seemed to have 
heard no scandal of later date than the gallantries 
of the Empress Faustina. In time, however, the 
judgment of the many was overruled by that of 20 
the few; and, before the book was reprinted, it 
was so eagerly sought that it sold for five times the 
original price. It is still read with pleasure: the 
style is pure and flowing; the classical quotations 
and allusions are numerous and happy ; and we are 25 
now and then charmed by that singularly humane 
and delicate humor in which Addison excelled all 
men. Y'et this agreeable work, even when con- 
sidered merely as. the history of a literary tour, 
may justly be censured on account of its faults of 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 173 

omission. We have already said that, thongli rich 
in extracts from the Latin poets, it contains 
scarcely any references to the Latin orators and 
historians. We must add, that it contains little, 
5 or rather no, information respecting the history 
and literature of modern Italy. To the best of our 
remembrance, Addison does not mention Dante, 
Petrarch, Boccaccio, Boiardo, Berni, Lorenzo de' 
Medici, or Machiavelli. He coldly tells us that at 

10 Ferrara he saw the tomb of Ariosto, and that at 
Venice he heard the gondoliers sing verses of 
Tasso. But for Tasso and Ariosto he cared far 
less than for Valerius Flaccus and Sidonius Apol- 
linaris. The gentle flow of the Ticin brings a line 

J5 of Silius to his mind. The sulphurous steam of 
Albula suggests to him several passages of Martial. 
But he has not a word to say of the illustrious dead 
of Santa Croce; he crosses the wood of Eavenna 
without recollecting the Spectre Huntsman; and 

20 wanders up and down Rimini without one thought 
of Francesca. At Paris he had eagerly sought an 
introduction to Boileau ; but he seems not to have 
been at all aware that at Florence he was in the 
vicinity of a poet with whom Boileau could not 

25 sustain a comparison, of the gi-eatest lyric poet of 
modern times, Vincenzio Filicaja. This is the 
more remarkable, because Filicaja was the favorite 
poet of the accomplished Somers, under whose 
protection Addison travelled, and to whom the 

30 account of the Travels is dedicated. The truth is, 



174 MACAULAYS ESSAYS 

that Addison knew little, and cared less, about the 
literature of modern Italy. His favorite models 
were Latin. His favorite critics were French. 
Half the Tuscan poetry that he had read seemed to 
him monstrous, aad the other half tawdry. 5 

His Travels were followed by the lively opera of 
Rosamond. This piece was ill set to music, and 
therefore failed on the stage, but it completely suc- 
ceeded in print, and is indeed excellent in its kind. 
The smoothness with which the verses glide, and 10 
the elasticity with which they bound, is, to onr 
ears at least, very pleasing. We are inclined to 
think that if Addison had left heroic couplets to 
Pope, and blank verse to Rowe, and had employed 
himself in writing airy and spirited songs, his repu- 15 
tation as a poet would have stood far higher than 
it now does. Some years after his death, Rosa- 
mond was set to new music by Doctor Arne; and 
was performed with complete success. Several 
passages long retained their popularity, and were 20 
daily sung, during the latter part of George the 
Second's reign, at all the harpsichords in England. 

While Addison thus amused himself, his pros- 
pects, and the prospects of his party, were con- 
stantly becoming brighter and brighter. In the 25 
spring of 1705 the ministers were freed from the 
restraint imposed by a House of Commons in 
which Tories of the most perverse class had the 
ascendency. The elections were favorable to the 
Whigs. The coalition which had been tacitly and 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 175 

gradually formed was now openly avowed. The 
Great Seal was given to Cowper. Somers and 
Halifax were sworn of the Council. Halifax was 
sent in the following year to carry the decorations 

5 of the order of the garter to the Electoral Prince of 
Hanover, and was accompanied on this honorable 
mission by Addison, who had just been made 
Undersecretary of State. The Secretary of State 
under whom Addison first served was Sir Charles 

10 Hedges, a Tory. But Hedges was soon dismissed 
to make room for the most vehement of Whigs, 
Charles, Earl of Sunderland. In every department 
of the state, indeed, the High Churchmen were 
compelled to give place to their opponents. At the 

15 close of 1707, the Tories who still remained in 
office strove to rally, with Harley at their head. 
But the attempt, though favored by the Queen, 
who had always been a Tory at heart, and who had 
now quarrelled with the Duchess of Marlborough, 

20 was unsuccessful. The time was not yet. The 
Captain General was at the height of popularity 
and glory. The Low Church party had a majority 
in Parliament. The country squires and rectors, 
though occasionally uttering a savage growl, were 

35 for the most part in a state of torpor, which lasted 
till they were roused into activity, and indeed into 
madness, by the prosecution of Sacheverell. Har- 
ley and his adherents were compelled to retire. 
The victory of the Whigs was complete. At the 

30 general election of 1708, their strength in the 



176 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

House of Commons became irresistible; and before 
the end of that year, Somers was made Lord Presi- 
dent of the Council, and Wharton Lord Lieutenant 
of Ireland. 

Addison sat for Malmsbury in the House of Com- 5 
mons which was elected in 1708, But the House of 
Commons was not the. field for him. The bashful- 
ness of his nature made his wit and eloquence use- 
less in debate. He once rose, but could not 
overcome his diffidence, and ever after remained 10 
silent. Nobody can think it strange that a great 
writer should fail as a sjoeaker. But many, prob- 
ably, will think it strange that Addison's failure as 
a speaker should have had no unfavorable effect on 
his success as a politician. In our time, a man of 15 
high rank and gi'eat fortune might, though speak- 
ing very little and very ill, hold a considerable 
post. But it would now be inconceivable that a 
mere adventurer, a man who, when out of office, 
must live by his pen, should in a few years become 20 
successively Undersecretary of State, Chief Secre- 
tary for Ireland, and Secretary of State, without 
some oratorical talent. Addison, without high 
birth, and with little j^roperty, rose to a post which 
dukes, the heads of the great houses of Talbot, 25 
Russell, and Bentinck, have thought it an honor 
to fill. Without opening his lips in debate, he 
rose to a post the highest that Chatham or Fox 
ever reached. And this he did before he had been 
nine years in Parliament. We must look for the 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 177 

explanation of this seeming miracle to the peculiar 
circumstances in which that generation was placed. 
During the interval which elapsed between the 
time when the Censorship of the Press ceased, and 

5 the time when parliamentary proceedings began to 
be freely reported, literary talents were, to a public 
man, of much more importance, and oratorical 
talents of much less importance, than in our time. 
At present, the best way of giving rapid and wide 

10 publicity to a fact or an argument is to introduce 
that fact or argument into a speech made in Parlia- 
ment. If a political tract were to appear superior 
to the Conduct of the Allies, or to the best num- 
bers of the Freeholder^ the circulation of such a 

:5 tract would be languid indeed when compared with 
the circulation of every remarkable word uttered in 
the deliberations of the legislature. A speech made 
in the House of Commons at four in the morning 
is on thirty thousand tables before ten. A speech 

20 made on the Monday is read on the Wednesday by 
multitndes in Antrim and Aberdeenshire. The 
orator, by the help of the shorthand writer, has to 
a great extent superseded the pamphleteer. It 
was not so in the reign of Anne. The best speech 

25 could then produce no effect except on those who 
heard it. It was only by means of the press that 
the opinion of the public without doors could be 
iufluenced ; and the opinion of the public without 
doors could not but be of the highest impor- 

30 tance in a country governed by parliaments, and 



178 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

indeed at that time governed by triennial parlia- 
ments. The pen was, therefore, a more formida- 
ble political engine than the tongue. Mr. Pitt 
and Mr. Fox contended only in Parliament. But 
Walpole and Pulteney, the Pitt and Fox of an 5 
earlier period, had not done half of what was neces- 
sary, when they sat down amidst the acclama- 
tions of the House of Commons. They had still 
to plead their cause before the country, and 
this they could do only by means of the press, lu 
Their works are now forgotten. But it is certain 
that there were in GruJ^ Street few more assidu- 
ous scribblers of Thoughts, Letters, Answers, 
Piemarks, than these two great chiefs of parties. 
Pulteney, when leader of the Opposition, and is 
possessed of thirty thousand a year, edited the 
Craftsman. Walpole, though not a man of liter- 
ary habits, was the author of at least ten pam- 
phlets, and retouched and corrected many more. 
These facts sufficiently show of how great impor- 20 
tance literary assistance then was to the contending 
parties. St. John was certainly, in Anne's reign, 
the best Tory speaker; Cowper was probably the 
best Whig speaker. But it may well be doubted 
whether St. John did so much for the Tories as 25 
Swift, and whether Cowper did so much for the . 
Whigs as Addison. When these things are duly 
considered, it will not be thought strange that 
Addison should have climbed higher in the state 
than any other Englishman has ever, by means 31 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 179 

merely of literary talents, been able to climb. 
Swift would, in all probability, have climbed as 
high, if he had not been encumbered by his cas- 
sock and his pudding sleeves. As far as the hom- 
5 age of the gi'eat went, Swift had as much of it as if 
he had been Lord-Treasurer. 

To the influence which Addison derived from his 
literary talents was added all the influence which 
arises from character. The world, always ready to 

10 think the worst of needy political adventurers, was 
forced to make one exception. Restlessness, vio- 
lence, audacity, laxity of principle, are the vices 
ordinarily attributed to that class of men. But 
faction itself could not deny that Addison had, 

15 through all changes of fortune, been strictly faith- 
ful to his early opinions, and to his early friends; 
that his integrity was without stain ; that his whole 
deportment indicated a fine sense of the becoming ; 

^ that in the utmost heat of controversy, his zeal was 

20 tempered by a regard for truth, humanity, and 
social decorum ; that no outrage could ever provoke 
him to retaliation unworthy of a Christian and a 
gentleman; and that his only faults were a too 
sensitive delicacy, and a modesty which amounted 

25 to bashfulness. 

He was undoubtedly one of the most popular 
men of his time ; and much of his popularity he 
owed, we believe, to that very timidity which his 
friends lamented. That timidity often prevented 

BO him from exhibiting his talents to the best advan- 



180 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

tage. But it propitiated Nemesis. It averted that 
envy which would otherwise have been excited by 
fame so splendid, and by so rapid an elevation. 
No man is so great a favorite with the public as he 
who is at once an object of admiration, of respect, 5 
and of pity; and such were the feelings which 
Addison inspired. Those who enjoyed the privi- 
lege of hearing his familiar conversation, declared 
with one voice that it was superior even to his 
writings. The brilliant Mary Montague said, that 10 
she had known all the wits, and that Addison was 
the best company in the world. The malignant 
Pope was forced to own, that there was a charm in 
Addison's talk which could be found nowhere else. 
Swift, when burning with animosity against the 15 
Whigs, could not but confess to Stella that, after 
all, he had never known any associate so agreeable 
as Addison. Steele, an excellent judge of lively 
conversation, said, that the conversation of Addi- 
son was at once the most polite, and the most 20 
mirthful, that could be imagined; that it was 
Terence and Catullus in one, heightened by an 
exquisite something which was neither Terence 
nor Catullus, but Addison alone. Young, an 
excellent judge of serious conversation, said, that 25 
when Addison was at his ease, he went on in a 
noble strain of thought and language, so as to 
chain the attention of every hearer. Nor were 
Addison's gi-eat colloquial powers more admirable 
than the courtesy and the softness of heart which 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 181 

appeared in his conversation. At the same time, 
it would be too much to say that he was wholly 
devoid of the malice which is, perhaps, inseparable 
from a keen sense of the ludicrous. He had one 

5 habit which both Swift and Stella applauded, and 
which we hardly know how to blame. If his first 
attempts to set a presuming dunce right were ill 
received, he changed his tone, "assented with civil 
leer," and lured the flattered coxcomb deeper and 

10 deeper into absurdity. That such was his practice 
we should, we think, have guessed from his works. 
The Tatler^s criticisms on Mr. Softly 's sonnet, and 
the Spectator's dialogue with the politician who is 
so zealous for the honor of Lady Q — p — t — s, are 

15 excellent specimens of this innocent mischief. 

Such were Addison's talents for conversation. 
But his rare gifts were not exhibited to cro^vds or 
to strangers. As soon as he entered a large com- 
pany, as soon as he saw an unknown face, his lips 

•20 were sealed, and his manners became constrained. 
Xone who met him only in great assemblies would 
have been able to believe that he was the same man 
who had often kept a few friends listening and 
laughing round a table, from the time when the 

25 play ended, till the clock of St. Paul's in Covent 
Garden struck four. Yet, even at such a table he 
was not seen to the best advantage. To enjoy his 
conversation in the highest perfection, it was nec- 
essary to be alone with him, and to hear him, in 

30 his own phrase, think aloud. "There is no such 



182 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

thing," he used to say, "as real conversation, but 
between two persons." 

This timidity, a timidity surely neither ungi-ace- 
ful nor unamiable, led Addison into the two most 
serious faults which can with justice be imputed to 5 
him. He found that wine broke the spell which 
lay on his fine intellect, and was therefore too 
easily seduced into convivial excess. Such excess 
was in that age regarded, even by grave men, as 
the most venial of all peccadilloes, and was so far 10 
from being a mark of ill -breeding, that it was 
almost essential to the character of a fine gentle- 
man. But the smallest speck is seen on a white 
ground; and almost all the biographers of Addison 
have said something about this failing. Of any 15 
other statesman or writer of Queen Anne's reign, 
we should no more think of saying that he some- 
times took too much wine, than that he wore a 
long wig and a sword. 

To the excessive modesty of Addison's nature we 20 
must ascribe another fault which generally arises 
from a very different cause. He became a little 
too fond of seeing himself surrounded by a small 
circle of admirers, to whom he was as a king, or 
rather as a god. All these men were far inferior 25 
to him in ability, and some of them had very seri- 
ous faults. Nor did those faults escape his obser- 
vation; for, if ever there was an eye which saw 
through and through men, it was the eye of Addi- 
son. But with the keenest observation, and the 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 183 

finest sense of the ridiculous, he had a large 
charity. The feeling with which he looked on 
most of his humble companions was one of benevo- 
lence, slightly tinctured with contempt. He was 

5 at perfect ease in their company ; he was grateful 
for their devoted attachment ; and he loaded them 
with benefits. Their veneration for him appears 
to have exceeded that with which Johnson was 
regarded by Boswell, or Warburton by Hurd. It 

10 was not in the power of adulation to turn such a 
head, or deprave such a heart, as Addison's. But 
it must in candor be admitted that he contracted 
some of the faults which can scarcely be avoided 
by any person who is so unfortunate as to be the 

15 oracle of a small literary coterie. 

One member of this little society was Eustace 
Budgell, a young Templar of some literature, and 
a distant relation of Addison. There was at this 
time no stain on the character of Budgell, and it is 

20 not improbable that his career would have been 
prosperous and honorable, if the life of his cousin 
liad been prolonged. But, when the master was 
laid in the gi'ave, the disciple broke loose from all 
restraint, descended rapidly from one degree of 

25 vice and misery to another, ruined his fortune by 
follies, attempted to repair it by crimes, and at 
length closed a wicked and unhappy life by self- 
murder. Yet, to the last, the wretched man, 
gambler, lampooner, cheat, forger, as he was, 

80 retained his affection and veneration for Addison, 



184 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

and recorded those feelings in the last lines which 
he traced before he hid himself from infamy nnder 
London Bridge. 

Another of Addison's favorite companions was 
Ambrose Philips, a good Whig and a middling 
poet, who had the honor of bringing into fashion a 
species of composition which has been called, after 
his name, Namby Pamby. But the most remark- 
able members of the little senate, as Pope long 
afterwards called it, were Eichard Steele and 
Thomas Tickell. 

Steele had known Addison from childhood. 
They had been together at the Charter House and 
at Oxford ; but circumstances had then, for a time, 
separated them widely. Steele had left college 
without taking a degree, had been disinherited by 
a rich relation, had led a vagrant life, had served 
in the army, had tried to find the philosopher's 
stone, and had written a religious treatise and 
several comedies. He was one of those people 
whom it is impossible either to hate or to respect. 
His temper was sweet, his affections warm, his 
spirits lively, his passions strong, and his prin- 
ciples weak. His life was spent in sinning and 
repenting; in inculcating what was right, and 
doing what was wrong. In speculation, he was a 
man of piety and honor ; in practice he was much 
of the rake and a little of the swindler. He was, 
however, so good-natured that it was not easy to be 
seriously angry with him, and that even rigid 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 185 

moralists felt more inclined to pity than to blame 
him, when he diced himself into a spunging-honse 
or drank himself into a fever. Addison regarded 
Steele with kindness not unmingled with scorn, 

5 tried, with little success, to keep him out of 
scrapes, introduced him to the great, procured a 
good place for him, corrected his plays, and, 
though by no means rich, lent him large sums of 
money. One of these loans appears, from a letter 

10 dated in August, 1708, to have amounted to a 
thousand pounds. These pecuniary transactions 
probably led to frequent bickerings. It is said 
that, on one occasion, Steele's negligence, or dis- 
honesty, provoked Addison to repay himself by the 

15 help of a bailiff. We cannot join with Miss Aikin 
in rejecting this story. Johnson heard it from 
Savage, who heard it from Steele. Few private 
transactions which took place a hundred and 
twenty years ago, are proved by stronger evidence 

20 than this. But we can by no means agree with 
those who condemn Addison's severity. The most 
amiable of mankind may well be moved to indigna- 
tion, when what he has earned hardly, and lent 
with great inconvenience to himself, for the pur- 

25 pose of relieving a friend in distress, is squandered 
with insane profusion. We will illustrate our 
meaning by an example which is not the less 
striking because it is taken from fiction. Dr. 
Harrison, in Fielding's Amelia, is represented as 

30 the most benevolent of human beings; yet he 



186 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

takes in execution, not only the goods, but the 
person of his friend Booth. Dr. Harrison resorts 
to this strong measure because he has been in- 
formed that Booth, while pleading poverty as an 
excuse for not paying just debts, has been buying 
fine jewellery, and setting up a coach. No person 
who is well acquainted with Steele's life and cor- 
respondence can doubt that he behaved quite as ill 
to Addison as Booth was accused of behaving to 
Dr. Harrison. The real history, we have little lo^ 
doubt, was something like this : — A letter comes to 
Addison, imploring help in pathetic terms, and 
promising reformation and speedy repayment. 
Poor Dick declares that he has not an inch of 
candle, or a bushel of coals, or credit with the 15 
butcher for a shoulder of mutton. Addison is 
moved. He determines to deny himself some 
medals which are wanting to his series of the 
Twelve Csesars ; to put off buying the new edition 
of Bayle's Dictionary; and to wear his old sword 20 
and buckles another year. In this way he manages 
to send a hundred pounds to his friend. The next 
day he calls on Steele, and finds scores of gentle- 
men and ladies assembled. The fiddles are play- 
ing. The table is groaning under champagne, 35 
burgundy, and pyramids of sweetmeats. Is it 
strange that a man whose kindness is thus abused, 
should send sheriff's officers to reclaim what is due 
to him? 

Tickell was a young man, fresh fi'om Oxford, 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 187 

wlio had introduced himself to public notice by- 
writing a most ingenious and graceful little poem 
in praise of the opera of Rosamond. He deserved, 
and at length attained, the first place in Addison's 
friendship. For a time Steele and Tickell were on 
good terms. But they loved Addison too much to 
love each other, and at length became as bitter 
enemies as the rival bulls in Yirgil. 

At the close of 1708 Wharton became Lord 
Lieutenant of Ireland, and appointed Addison 
Chief Secretary. Addison was consequently under 
the necessity of quitting London for Dublin. 
Besides the chief secretaryship, which was then 
worth about two thousand pounds a year, he 
obtained a patent appointing him keeper of the 
Irish Records for life, with a salary of three or 
four hundred a year. Budgell accompanied his 
cousin in the capacity of private secretary. 

AVharton and Addison had nothing in common 
but Whiggism. The Lord Lieutenant was not 
only licentious and corrupt, but was distinguished 
from other libertines and jobbers by a callous im- 
pudence which presented the strongest contrast to 
the Secretary's gentleness and delicacy. Many 
parts of the Irish administration at this time 
appear to have deserved serious blame. But 
against Addison there was not a murmur. He 
long afterwards asserted, what all the evidence 
which we have ever seen tends to prove, that 
his diligence and integrity gained the friend- 



188 MACAULAY-S ESSAYS 

ship of all the most considerable persons in 
Ireland. 

The parliamentary career of Addison in Ireland 
has, we think, wholly escaped the notice of all his 
biographers. He was elected member for the 
borough of Cavan in the summer of 1709; and in 
the journals of tAvo sessions his name frequently 
occurs. Some of the entries appear to indicate 
that he so far overcame his timidity as to make 
sj^eeches. Nor is this by any means imjDrobable; ; 
for the Irish House of Commons was a far less 
formidable audience than the English House ; and 
many tongues which were tied by fear in the 
gi'eater assembly became fluent in the smaller. 
Gerard Hamilton, for example, who, from fear of ; 
losing the fame gained by his single speech, sat 
mute at Westminster during forty years, spoke 
with great effect at Dublin when he was secretary 
to Lord Halifax. 

While Addison was in Ireland, an event occurred i 
to which he owes his high and permanent rank 
among British writers. As yet his fame rested on 
performances which, though highly respectable, 
were not built for duration, and which would, if 
he had_^produced nothing else, have now been s 
almost forgotten ; on some excellent Latin verses ; 
on some English verses which occasionally rose 
above mediocrity ; and on a book of travels, agree- 
ably written, but not indicating any extraordinary 
powers of mind. These works showed him to be a J 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 189 

man of taste, sense, and learning. The time had 
come when he was to prove himself a man of 
genius, and to enrich our literature with composi- 
tions which will live as long as the English lan- 
guage. 

In the spring of 1709 Steele formed a literary 
project, of which he was far indeed from foresee- 
ing the consequences. Periodical papers had 
during many years been published in London. 
Most of these were political ; but in some of them 
questions of morality, taste, and love-casuistry had 
been discussed. The literary merit of these works 
was small indeed; and even their names are now 
known only to the curious. 

Steele had been appointed Gazetteer by Sunder- 
land, at the request, it is said, of Addison, and 
thus had access to foreign intelligence earlier and 
more authentic than was in those times within the 
reach of an ordinary news -writer. This circum- 
stance seems to have suggested to him the scheme 
of publishing a periodical paper on a new plan. It 
was to appear on the days on which the post left 
London for the country, which were, in that 
generation, the Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Satur- 
days. It was to contain the foreign news, accounts 
of theatrical representations, and the literary gossip 
of Will's and of the Grecian. It was also to con- 
tain remarks on the fashionable topics of the day, 
compliments to beauties, pasquinades on noted 
sharpers, and criticisms on popular preachers. 



190 .ilACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

The aim of Steele does not appear to have been at 
first higher than this. He was not ill-qualified to 
conduct the work which he had planned. His 
public intelligence he di-ew from the best sources. 
He knew the town, and had paid dear for his 
knowledge. He had read much more than the 
dissipated men of that time were in the habit of 
reading. He was a rake among scholars, and a 
scholar among rakes. His style was easy and not 
incorrect ; and though his wit and humor were of i 
no high order, his gay animal spirits imparted to 
his compositions an air of vivacity which ordinary 
readers could hardly distinguish from comic 
genius. His writings have been well compared to 
those light wines which, though deficient in body 
and flavor, are yet a pleasant small drink, if not 
kept too long, or carried too far. 

Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was an 
imaginary person, almost as well known in that 
age as Mr. Paul Pry or Mr. Samuel Pickwick in 
ours. Swift had assumed the name of Bickerstail 
in a satirical pamphlet against Partridge, the 
maker of almanacs. Partridge had been fool 
enough to publish a furious reply. Bickerstaff 
had rejoined in a second pamphlet still more 
diverting than the first. All the wits had 
combined to keep up the joke, and the town was 
long in convulsions of laughter. Steele deter- 
mined to employ the name which this controversy 
had made popular; and in April, 1709, it was 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 191 

ar.nounced that Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrolo- 
ger, was about to publish a paper called the Tatler. 

Addison had not been consulted about this 
scheme; but as soon as he heard of it he deter- 
mined to give his assistance. The effect of that 
assistance cannot be better described than in 
Steele's own words. "I fared," he said, "like a 
distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbor 
to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When 
I had once called him in, I could- not subsist with- 
out dependence on him." "The paper," he says 
elsewhere, "was advanced indeed. It was raised 
to a greater thing than I intended it." 

It is probable that Addison, when he sent across 
St. Greorge's Channel his first contributions to the 
Tatler^ had no notion of the extent and variety of 
his own powers. He was the possessor of a vast 
mine, rich with a hundred ores. But he had 
been acquainted only with the least precious part 
of his treasures, and h-ad hitherto contented him- 
self with producing sometimes copper and some- 
times lead, intermingled with a little silver. All 
at once, and by mere accident, he had lighted on 
an inexhaustible vein of the finest gold. 

The mere choice and arrangement of his words 
would have sufficed to make his essays classical. For 
never, not even by Dryden, not even by Temple, 
had the English language been written with such 
sweetness, grace, and facility. But this was the 
smallest part of Addison's praise. Had he clothed 



192 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

his thouglits in the half French style of Horace 
Walpole, or in the half Latin style of Dr. John- 
son, or in the half German jargon of the present 
day, his genius would have triumphed over all 
faults of manner. As a moral satirist he stands ' 
unrivalled. If ever the best Tatlers and Spec- 
tators were equalled in their own kind, we should 
be inclined to guess that it must have been by the 
lost comedies of Menander. 

In wit, properly so called, Addison was not if 
inferior to Cowley or Butler. No single ode of 
Cowley contains so many happy analogies as are 
crowded into the lines to Sir Godfrey Knell er; and 
we would undertake to collect from the Spectators 
as great a number of ingenious illustrations as can i; 
be found in Hudibras. The still higher faculty of 
invention Addison possessed in still larger meas- 
ure. The numerous fictions, generally original, 
often wild and grotesque, but always singularly 
graceful and happy, which are found in his essays, 2 
fully entitle him to the rank of a great poet, a 
rank to which his metrical compositions give him 
no claim. As an observer of life, of manners, of 
all the shades of human character, he stands in the 
first class. And what he observed he had the art 2 
of communicating in two widely different ways. 
He could describe virtues, vices, habits, whims as 
well as Clarendon. But he could do something 
better. He could call human beings into exist- 
ence, and make them exhibit themselves. If we 2 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 193 

wish to find anything more vivid than Addison's 
best portraits, we must go either to Shakespeare or 
to Cervantes. 

But what s'hall we say of Addison's humor, of 
his sense of the hidicrous, of his power of awaken- 
ing that sense in others, and of drawing mirth from 
incidents which occur every day, and from little 
peculiarities of temper and manner, such as may 
be found in every man? We feel the charm : we 
give ourselves up to it ; but we strive in vain to 
analyze it. 

Perhaps tlie best way of describing Addison's 
peculiar pleasantry is to compare it with the pleas- 
antry of some other great satirists. The three 
most eminent masters of the art of ridicule during 
the eighteenth century, were, we conceive, Addi- 
son, Swift, and Voltaire. Which of the three had 
the greatest power of moving laughter may be 
questioned. But each of them, within his own 
domain, was supreme. 

Voltaire is the prince of buffoons. His merri- 
ment is without disguise or restraint. He gam- 
bols ; he grins ; he shakes his sides ; he points the 
finger; he turns up the nose; he shoots out the 
tongue. The manner of Swift is the very opposite' 
to this. He moves laughter, but never joins in it. 
He appears in his works such as he appeared in 
society. All the company are convulsed with 
merriment, while the Dean, the author of all the 
mirth, preserves an invincible gravity, and even 



194 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

sourness of aspect, and gives utterance to the most 
eccentric and ludicrous fancies, with the air of a 
man reading the commination service. 

The manner of Addison is as remote from that 
of Swift as from that of Voltaire. He neither 
laughs out like the French wit, nor, like the Irish 
wit, throAvs a double portion of severity into his 
countenance while laughing inwardly; but pre- 
serves a look peculiarly his own, a look of demure 
serenity, disturbed only by an arch sparkle of the 
eye, an almost imperceptible elevation of the brow, 
an almost imperceptible curl of the lip. His tone 
is never that either of a Jack Pudding or of a 
cynic. It is that of a gentleman, in whom the 
quickest sense of the ridiculous is constantly 
tempered by good nature and good breeding. 

We own that the humor of Addison is, in our 
opinion, of a more delicious flavor than the humor 
of either Swift or Voltaire. Thus much, at least, 
is certain, that both Swift and' Voltaire have been 
successfully mimicked, and that no man has yet 
•been able to mimic Addison. The letter of the 
Abbe Coyer to Pansophe is Voltaire all over, and 
imposed, during a long time, on the Academicians 
•of Paris. There are passages in Arbuthnot's 
satirical works which Ave, at least, cannot- distin- 
guish from Swift's- best writing. But of the many 
eminent men Avho have made Addison their 
model, though several have copied his mere diction 
with happy effect, none have been able to catch 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 195 

the tone of his pleasantry. In the Worlds in the 
Connoisseur^ in the Mirror^ in the Lounger^ there 
are nnmerous papers written in obvious imitation 
of his Tatlers and Spectators. Most of these 
papers have some merit ; many are very lively and 
amusing; but there is not a single one which 
could be passed off as Addison's on a critic of the 
smallest perspicacity. 

But that which chiefly distinguishes Addison 
from Swift, from Voltaire, from almost all the 
other great masters of ridicule, is the grace, the 
nobleness, the moral purity, which we find even in 
his merriment. Severity, gradually hardening and 
darkening into misanthropy, characterizes the 
works of Swift. The nature of Voltaire was, 
indeed, not inhuman; but he venerated nothing. 
Neither in the masterpieces of art nor in the purest 
examples of virtue, neither in the Great First Cause 
nor in the awful enigma of the grave, could he see 
anything but subjects for di'ollery. The more 
solemn and august the theme, the more monkey- 
like was his grimacing and chattering. The 
mirth of Swift is the mirth of Mephistopheles ; the 
mirth of Voltaire is the mirth of Puck. If, as 
Soame Jenyns oddly imagined, a portion of the 
happiness of seraphim and just men made perfect 
be derived from an exquisite perception of the 
ludicrous, their mirth must surely be none other 
than the mirth of Addison; a mirth consistent 
with tender compassion for all that is frail, and 



196 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

with profound reverence for all that is sublime. 
Nothing great, nothing amiable, no moral duty, 
no doctrine of natural or revealed religion, has ever 
been associated by Addison with any degrading 
idea. His humanity is without a parallel in liter- 
ary history. The highest proof of virtue is to 
possess boundless power without abusing it. No 
kind of power is more formidable than the power 
of making men ridiculous; and that power Addi- 
son possessed in boundless measure. How grossly 
that power was abused by Swift and by Voltaire is 
well known. But of Addison it may be confidently 
affirmed that he has blackened no man's character, 
nay, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, 
to find in all the volumes which he has left us a 
single taunt which can be called ungenerous or 
unkind. Yet he had detractors, whose malignity 
might have seemed to justify as terrible a revenge 
as that which men, not superior to him in genius, 
wreaked on Bettesworth and on Franc de Pompig- 
nan. He was a politician; he was the best ^vriter 
of his party ; he lived in times of fierce excitement, 
in times when 2:)ersons of high character and station 
stooped to scurrility such as is now practised only 
by the basest of mankind. Yet no provocation 
and no examj^le could induce him to return railing 
for railing. 

Of the service which his Essays rendered to 
morality it is difficult to speak too highly. It is 
true, that, when the Tatler appeared, that age of 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 197 

outrageous profaneness and licentiousness which 
followed the Restoration had passed away. 
Jeremy Collier had shamed the theatres into some- 
thing which, compared with the excesses of Ether- 

5 ege and Wycherley, might be called decency. Yet 
there still lingered in the public mind a pernicious 
notion that there was some connection between 
genius and profligacy; between the domestic vir- 
tues and the sullen formality of the Puritans. 

10 That error it is the glory of Addison to have dis- 
pelled. He taught the nation that the faith and 
the morality of Hale and Tillotson might be found 
in company with wit more sparkling than the wit 
of Congreve, and with humor richer than the 

15 humor of Vanbrugh. So effectually, indeed, did 
he retort on vice the mockery which had recently 
been directed against virtue, that, since his time, 
the open violation of decency has always been con- 
sidered among us as the mark of a fool. And this 

20 revolution, the greatest and most salutary ever 
effected by any satirist, he accomplished, be it 
remembered, without writing one personal lam- 
poon. 

In the early contributions of Addison to the 

25 TatJer^ his peculiar powers were not fully ex- 
hibited. Yet from the first, his superiority to all 
his coadjutors was evident. Some of his later 
TatJers are fully equal to anything that he ever, 
wrote. Among the portraits, we most admire 

80 Tom Folio, Ned Softly, and the Political Uphol- 



198 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

sterer. The proceedings of the Court of Honor, 
the Thermometer of Zeal, the story of the Frozen 
Words, the Memoirs of tlie Shilling, are excellent 
specimens of that ingenions and lively species of 
fiction in which Addison excelled all men. There e 
is one still better paper of the same class. But 
though that paper, a hundred and thirty-three 
years ago, was probably thought as edifying as one 
of Smalridge's sermons, we dare not indicate it to 
the squeamish readers of the nineteenth century, ic 

During the session of Parliament which com- 
menced in November, 1709, and which the im- 
peachment of Sacheverell has made memorable, 
Addison appears to have resided in London. The 
Tatler was now more popular than any periodical 15 
paper had ever been ; and his connection with it 
was • generally known. It was not known, how- 
ever, that almost everything good in "the Tatler was 
his. The truth is, that the fifty or sixty numbers 
which we owe to him were not merely the best, 20 
but so decidedly the best that any five of them are 
more valuable than all the two hundred numbers 
in which he had no share. 

He required, at this time, all the solace which 
he could derive from literary success. The Queen 25 
had always disliked the Whigs. She had during 
Gome years disliked the Marlborough family. But, 
reigning by a disputed title, she could not venture 
directly to oppose herself to a majority of both 
Houses of Parliament ; and, engaged as she was in 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 19S 

a war on the event of which her own crown was 
staked, she could not venture to disgrace a great 
and successful general. But at length, in the year 
1710, the causes which had restrained her from 

5 showing her aversion to the Low Church party 
ceased to operate. The trial of Sacheverell pro- 
duced an outbreak of public feeling scarcely less 
violent than the outbreaks which we can ourselves 
remember in 1820, and in 1831. The country 

10 gentlemen, the country clergymen, the rabble of 
the towns, were all, for once, on the same side. 
It was clear that, if a general election took place 
before the excitement abated, the Tories would 
have a majority. The services of Marlborough 

15 had been so splendid that they were no longer 
necessary. The Queen's throne was secure from 
all attack on the part of Louis. Indeed, it seemed 
much more likely that the English and German 
armies would divide the spoils of Versailles and 

80 Marli than that a Marshal of France would bring 
back the Pretender to St. James's. The Queen, 
acting by the advice of Harley, determined to dis- 
miss her servants. In June the change com- 
menced. Sunderland was the first who fell. The 

85 Tories exulted over his fall. The Whigs tried, 
during a few weeks, to persuade themselves that 
her majesty had acted only from personal dislike to 
the Secretary, and that she meditated no further 
alteration. But, early in August, Godolphin was 

30 surprised by a letter from Anne, which directed 



200 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

him to break liis white staff. Even after this 
event, the u'resolution or dissimulation of Harley 
kept lip the hopes of the Whigs during another 
month; and then the ruin became rapid and vio- 
lent. The Parliament was dissolved. The 
ministers were turned out. The Tories were 
called to office. The tide of popularity ran vio- 
lently in favor of the High Church party. That 
party, feeble in the late House of Commons, was 
now irresistible. The power which the Tories had 
thus suddenly acquired, they used with blind and 
stupid ferocity. The howl which the whole pack 
set up for prey and for blood appalled even him 
who had roused and unchained them. When, at 
this distance of time, we calmly review the conduct 
of the discarded ministers, we cannot but feel a 
movement of indignation at the injustice with 
which they were treated. No body of men had 
ever administered the government with more 
energy, ability, and moderation; and their success so 
had been proportioned to their wisdom. They 
had saved Holland and Germany. They had 
humbled France. They had, as it seemed, all but 
torn Spain frofn the house of Bourbon. They had 
made England the first power in Europe. At 
home they had united England and Scotland. 
They had respected the rights of conscience and 
the liberty of the subject. They retired, leaving 
their country at the height of prosperity and 
glory. And yet they were pursued to their retreat 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 201 

by sucli a roar of obloquy as was never raised 
against the government which threw away thirteen 
colonies, or against the government which sent a 
gallant army to perish in the ditches of Walcheren. 

^ None of the Whigs suffered more in the general 
wreck than Addison. He had just sustained some 
heavy pecuniary losses, of the nature of which we 
are imperfectly informed, when his secretaryship 
was taken from him. He had reason to believe 

10 that he should also be deprived of the small Irish 
office which he held by patent. He had just 
resigned his fellowship. It seems probable that 
he had already ventured to raise his eyes to a great 
lady, and that, while his political friends were in 

15 power, and while his own fortunes were rising, he 
had been, in the phrase of the romances which 
were then fashionable, permitted to hope. But 
Mr. Addison the ingenious writer, and Mr. Addi- 
son the chief secretary, were, in her ladyship's 

30 opinion, two very different persons. All these 
calamities united, however, could not disturb the 
serene cheerfulness of a mind conscious of inno- 
cence, and rich in its own wealth. He told his 
friends, with smiling resignation, that they ought 

25 to admire his philosophy ; that he had lost at once 
his fortune, his place, his fellowship, and his mis- 
tress ; that he must think of turning tutor again ; 
and yet that his spirits were as good as ever. 

He had one consolation. Of the unpopularity 

30 which his friends had incurred, he had no share. 



202 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

Such was the esteem with which he was regarded 
that, while the most violent measures were taken 
for the purpose of forcing Tory members on Whig 
corporations, he was returned to Parliament with- 
out even a contest. Swift, who was now in Lon- 5 
don, and who had already determined on quitting 
the Whigs, wrote to Stella in these remarkable 
words : "The Tories carry it among the new mem- 
bers six to one. Mr. Addison's election has 
passed easy and undisputed; and I believe if he 10 
had a mind to be king he would hardly be 
refused." 

The good will with which the Tories regarded 
Addison is the more honorable to him, because it 
had not been purchased by any concession on his ih 
part. During the general election he published a 
political journal, entitled the Whig Examiner. 
Of that journal it may be sufficient to say that 
Johnson, in spite of his strong political prejudices, 
pronounced it to be superior in wit to any of 20 
Swift's writings on the other side. When it ceased 
to appear, Swift, in a letter to Stella, expressed his 
exultation at the death of so formidable an 
antagonist. "He might well rejoice," says John- 
son, "at the death of that which he could not have 35 
killed." "On no occasion," he adds, "was the 
genius of Addison more vigorously exerted, and on 
none did the superiority of his powers more evi- 
dently appear." 

The only use which Addison appears to have 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 203 

made of the favor with which he was regarded by 
the Tories was to save, some of his friends from the 
general ruin of the Whig party. He felt himself 
to be in a situation which made it his duty to take 

5 a decided part in politics. But the case of Steele 
and of Ambrose Philips was different. For 
Philips, Addison even condescended to solicit, 
with what success we have not ascertained. Steele 
held two places. He was Gazetteer, and he was 

10 also a Commissioner of Stamps. The Gazette was 
taken from him. But he was suffered to retain 
his place in the Stamp Office, on an implied under- 
standing that he should not be active against the 
new government; and he was, during more than 

15 two years, induced by Addison to observe this 
armistice with tolerable fidelity. 

Isaac Bickerstaff accordingly became silent upon 
politics, and the article of news which had once 
formed about one- third of his paper, altogether 

20 disappeared. The Tatler had completely changed 
its character. It was now nothing but a series of 
essays on books, morals, and manners. Steele 
therefore resolved to bring it to a close, and to 
commence a new work on an improved plan. It 

25 was announced that this new work would be pub- 
lished daily. The undertaking was generally 
regarded as bold, or rather rash; but the event 
amply justified the confidence with which Steele 
relied on the fertility of Addison's genius. On 

so the second of January, 1711, appeared the last 



204 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

Tatler. At the beginning of March following 
appeared the first of an incomparable series of 
papers, containing observations on life and liter- 
ature by an imaginary spectator. 

The Spectator himself was conceived and di-awn 
by Addison; and it is not easy to donbt that the 
portrait was meant to be in some features a like- 
ness of the painter. The Spectator is a gentleman 
who, after passing a studious youth at the univer- 
sity, has travelled on classic ground, and has 
bestowed much attention on curious points of 
antiquity. He has, on his return, fixed his resi- 
dence in London, and has observed all the forms of 
life which are to be found in that great city; has 
daily listened to the wits of Will's, has smoked 
with the philosophers of the Grecian, and has 
mingled with the parsons at Child's, and with the 
politicians at the St. James's. In the morning, he 
often listens to the hum of the Exchange ; in the 
evening, his face is constantly to be seen in the pit 
of Drury Lane Theatre. But an insm-mountable 
bashfulness prevents him from opening his mouth 
except in a small circle of intimate friends. 

These friends were first sketched by Steele. 
Four of the club, the templar, the clergyman, the 
soldier, and the merchant, were uninteresting fig- 
ures, fit only for a background. But the other 
two, an old country baronet and an old town rake, 
though not delineated with a very delicate pencil, 
had some good strokes. Addison took the rude 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 205 

outlines into his own hands, retouched them, 
colored them, and is in truth the creator of the Sir 
Roger de Coverley and the Will Honeycomb with 
whom we are all familiar. 

The plan of the Spectator must be allowed to be 
both original and eminently happy. Every valu- 
able essay in the series may be read with pleasure 
separately ; yet the five or six hundred essays form 
a whole, and a whole which has the interest of a 

10 novel. It must be remembered, too, that at that 
time no novel, giving a lively and powerful picture 

I of the common life and manners of England, had 
appeared. Richardson was working as a composi- 
tor. Fielding was robbing birds' nests. Smollett 

15 was not yet born. ' The narrative, therefore, which 
connects together the Spectator's essays, gave to 
our ancestors their first taste of an exquisite and 

j untried pleasure. That narrative was indeed con- 
structed with no art or labor. The events were 

20 such events as occur every day. Sir Roger comes 
up to town to see Eugenio, as the worthy baronet 
always calls Prince Eugene, goes with the Specta- 
tor on the water to Spring Gardens, walks among 
the tombs in the Abbey, and is frightened by the 

25 Mohawks, but conquers his apprehension so far as 
to go to the theatre when the Distressed Mother is 
acted. The Spectator pays a visit in the summer 
to Coverley Hall, is charmed with the old house, 
the old butler, and the old chaplain, eats a jack 

30 caught by Will Wimble, rides to the assizes, and 



206 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

hears a point of law discussed by Tom Touchy. 
At last a letter from the honest butler brings to the 
club the news that Sir Koger is dead. Will 
Honeycomb marries and reforms at sixty. The 
club breaks up; and the Spectator resigns his 6 
functions. Such events can hardly be said to form 
a plot ; yet they are related with such truth, such 
grace, such wit, such humor, such pathos, such 
knowledge of the human heart, such knowledge of 
the ways of the world, that they charm us on the k 
hundredth perusal. We have not the least doubt 
that if Addison had written a novel, on an exten- 
sive plan, it would have beea superior to any that 
we possess. As it is, he is entitled to be con- 
sidered not only as the greatest of the English i: 
essayists, but as the forerunner of the great Eng- 
lish novelists. 

We say this of Addison alone; for Addison is 
the Spectator. About three-sevenths of the work 
are his ; and it is no exaggeration to say, that his 21 
worst essay is as good as the best essay of any of 
his coadjutors. His best essays approach near to 
absolute perfection; nor is their excellence more 
wonderful than their variety. His invention never 
seems to flag ; nor is he ever under the necessity of 2 
repeating himself, or of wearing out a subject. 
There are no dregs in his wine. He regales us 
after the fashion of that prodigal nabob who held 
that there was only one good glass in a bottle. As 
soon as we have tasted the first sparkling foam of a 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 207 

a jest, it is withdrawn, and a fresh draught of 
nectar is at our lips. On the Monday, we have an 
allegory as lively and ingenious as Lucian's Auc- 
tion of Lives ; on the Tuesday, an Eastern apologue 

5 as richly colored as the Tales of Scheherezade ; on 
the Wednesday, a character described with the 
skill of La Bruyere; on the Thursday, a scene 
from common life, equal to the best chapters in 
the Vicar of Wakefield; on the Friday, some sly 

10 Horatian pleasantry on fashionable follies, — on 

hoops, patches, or puppet-shows; and on the 

Saturday, a religious meditation, which will bear a 

comparison with the finest passages in Massillon. 

It is dangerous to select where there is so much 

15 that deserves the highest praise. We will venture, 
however, to say, that any person who wishes to 
form a just notion of the extent and variety of 
Addison's powers, will do well to read at one sit- 
ting the following papers : The two Visits to the 

20 Abbey, the visit to the Exchange, the Journal of 
the Retired Citizen, the Vision of Mirza, the 
Transmigrations of Pug the Monkey, and the 
Death of Sir Roger de Coverley. 

The least valuable of Addison's contributions to 

25 the Spectator are, in the judgment of our age, his 
critical papers. Yet his critical papers are always 
luminous, and often ingenious. The very worst 
of them must be regarded as creditable to him, 
when the character of the school in which he had 

30 been trained is fairly considered. The best of 



208 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

them were much too good for his readers. In 
truth, he was not so far behind our generation as 
he was before his own. No essays in the Spectator 
were more censured and derided than those in 
which he raised his voice against the contempt '5 
with which our fine old ballads were regarded, and 
showed the scoffers that the same gold which, 
burnished and polished, gives lustre to the ^neid 
and the Odes of Horace, is mingled with the rude 
dross of Chevy Chase. 10 

It is not strange that the success of the Spectator 
should have been such as no similar work has ever 
obtained. The number of copies daily distributed 
was at first three thousand. It subsequently 
increased, and had risen to near four thousand 15 
when the stamp tax was imposed. That tax was 
fatal to a crowd of journals. The Spectator, how- 
ever, stood its ground, doubled its price, and, 
though its circulation fell off, still yielded a large 
revenue both to the state and to the authors. For 20 
particular papers, the demand was immense; of 
some, it is said, twenty thousand copies were 
required. But this was not all. To have the 
Spectator served up every morning with the bohea 
and rolls was a luxury for the few. The majority 25 
were content to wait till essays enough had 
appeared to form a volume. Ten thousand copies 
of each volume were immediately taken off, and 
new editions were called for. It must be remem- 
bered, that the population of England was then 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 209 

hardly a third of what it now is. The number of 
Englishmen who were in the habit of reading, was 
probably not a sixth of what it now is. A shop- 
keeper or a farmer who found any pleasure in 
literature, was a rarity. Nay, there was doubtless 
more than one knight of the shire whose country 
seat did not contain ten books, receipt-books and 
books on farriery included. In these circumstan- 
ces, the sale of the Spectator must be considered as 
10 indicating a popularity quite as great as that of the 
,^ most successful works of Sir Walter Scott and Mr. 
t Dickens in our own time. 

I At the close of 1712 the Spectator ceased to 

f appear. It was probably felt that the shortfaced 

15 gentleman and his club had been long enough 

tt " before the town ; and that it was time to withdraw 

B them, and to replace them by a new set of charac- 

I ters. In a few weeks the first number of the 

Ouarclian was published. But the Guardian was 

30 unfortunate both in its birth and in its death. It 

began in dulness and disappeared in a tempest of 

t faction. The original plan was bad. Addison 

W contributed nothing till sixty-six numbers had 

1 appeared ; and it was then impossible to make the 

25 Guardian what the Spectator had been. Nestor 

Ironside and the Miss Lizards were people to whom 

even he could impart no interest. He could only 

furnish some excellent little essays, both serious 

and comic ; and this he did. 

30 Why Addison gave no assistance to the Guard- 



210 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 



*i 



ian during the first two months of its existence, 
is a question which has puzzled the editors and 
biographers, but which seems to us to admit of a 
very easy solution. He was then engaged in bring- 
ing his Cato on the stage. 

The first four acts of this drama had been lying 
in his desk since his return from Italy. His 
modest and sensitive nature shrank from the risk of 
a public and shameful failure; and, though all 
who saw the manuscript were loud in praise, some 
thought it possible that an audience might become 
impatient even of very good rhetoric, and advised 
Addison to print the play without hazarding a 
representation. At length, after many fits of 
apprehension, the poet yielded to the urgency of 
his political friends, who hoped that the public 
would discover some analogy between the followers 
of Caesar and the Tories, between Sempronius and 
the apostate Whigs, between Cato, struggling to 
the last for the liberties of Rome, and the band of 
patriots who still stood firm round Halifax and 
Wharton. 

Addison gave the play to the managers of Drury 
Lane Theatre, without stipulating for any advan- 
tage to himself. They, therefore, thought them- 
selves bound to spare no cost in scenery and 
dresses. The decorations, it is true, would not 
have pleased the skilful eye of Mr. Macready. 
Juba's waistcoat blazed with gold lace; Marcia'a 
hoop was worthy of a duchess on the birthday; and 



I 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 211 

Cato wore a wig worth fifty guineas. The pro- 
logue was written by Pope, and is undoubtedly a 
dignified and spirited composition. The part of 
the hero was excellently played by Booth. Steele 

5 undertook to pack a house. The boxes were in a 
blaze with the stars of the Peers in Opposition. 
The pit was crowded with attentive and friendly 
listeners from the Inns of Court and the literary 
coffee-houses. Sir Gilbert Heathcote, Governor of 

10 the Bank of England, was at the head of a power- 
ful body of auxiliaries from the city, warm men 
and true Whigs, but better known at Jonathan's 
and Garraway's than in the haunts of wits and 
critics. 

15 These precautions were quite superfluous. The 
Tories, as a body, regarded Addison with no un- 
kind- feelings. Nor was it for their interest, pro- 
fessing, as they did, profound reverence for law 
and prescription, and abhorrence both of popular 

20 insurrections and of standing armies, to appropri- 
ate to themselves reflections thrown on the great 
military chief and demagogue, who, v/ith the sup- 
port of tlie legions and of the common people, 
subverted all the ancient institutions of his coun- 

25 try. Accordingly, every shout that was raised by 
the members of the Kit Cat was echoed by the 
High Churchmen of the October ; and the curtain 
at length fell amidst thunders of unanimous 
applause. 

30 The delight and admiration of the town were 



212 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

described by the Guardian in terms which we 
might attribute to partiality, were it not that the 
Examiner^ the organ of the ministry, held similar 
language. The Tories, indeed, found much to 
sneer at in the conduct of their opponents. 5 
Steele had on this, as on other occasions, shown 
more zeal than taste or judgment. The honest 
citizens who marched under the orders of Sir 
Gibby, as he was facetiously called, probably knew 
better when to buy and when to sell stock than lo 
when to clap and when to hiss at a play, «and 
incurred some ridicule by making the hypocritical 
Sempronius their favorijbe, and by giving to his 
insincere rants louder plaudits than they bestowed 
on the temperate eloquence of Cato. Wharton, 15 
too, who had the incredible effrontery to applaud 
the lines about flying from prosperous vice and 
from the power of impious men to a private station, 
did not escape the sarcasms of those who justly 
thought that he could fly from nothing more 20 
vicious or impious than himself. The epilogue, 
which was written by Garth, a zealous Whig, was 
severely and not unreasonably censured as ignoble 
and out of place. But Addison was described, 
even by the bitterest Tory writers, as a gentleman 25 
of wit and virtue, in whose friendship many per- 
sons of both parties were happy, and whose name 
ought not to be mixed up with factious squabbles. \ 

Of t<he jests by which the triumph of the Whig 
party was disturbed, the most severe and happy 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 213 

was Bolingbroke's. Between two acts he sent for 
Booth to his box, and presented him, before the 
whole theatre, with a purse of fifty guineas for 
defending the cause of liberty so well against a 

5 perpetual Dictator. This was a i^ungent allusion 
to the attempt which Marlborough had made, not 
long before his fall, to obtain a patent creating 
him Captain General for life. 

It was April; and in April, a hundred and 

10 thirty years ago, the London season was thought to 
be far advanced. During a whole month, how- 
ever, Cato was performed to overflowing houses, 
and brought into the treasury of the theatre twice 
the gains of an ordinary spring. In the summer 

15 the Drury Lane company went down to the Act at 
Oxford, and there, before an audience which 
retained an affectionate remembrance of Addison's 
accomplishments and virtues, his tragedy was 
enacted during several days. The gownsmen 

30 began to besiege the theatre in the forenoon, and 
by one in the afternoon all the seats were filled. 

About the merits of the piece which had so 
extraordinary an effect, the public, we suppose, 
has made up its mind. To compare it with the 

25 masterpieces of the Attic stage, with the great 
English dramas of the time of Elizabeth, or even 
with the productions of Schiller's manhood, would 
be absurd indeed; yet it contains excellent dia- 
logue and declamation, and, among plays fashioned 

30 on the French model, must be allowed to rank 



214 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

high, — not indeed with Athalie or Saul, bnt, we 
think, not below Cinna, and certainly above any 
other English tragedy of the same school; above 
many of the plays of Corneille ; above many of the 
plays of Voltaire and Alfieri; and above some 5 
plays of Racine. Be this as it may, we have little 
doubt that Cato did as much as the Tatlers^ Spec- 
tators^ and Freeliolders united, to raise Addison's 
fame among his contemporaries. 

The modesty and good nature of the successful lo 
dramatist had tamed even the malignity of faction. 
But literary envy, it should seem., is a fiercer pas- 
sion than party spirit. It was by a zealous Whig 
that the fiercest attack on the Whig tragedy was 
made. John Dennis published Eemarks on Cato, 15 
which were written with some acuteness and with 
much coarseness and asperity. Addison neither 
defended himself nor retaliated. On many points 
he had an excellent defence, and nothing would 
have been easier than to retaliate ; for Dennis had 20 
written bad odes, bad tragedies, bad comedies: he 
had, moreover, a larger share than most men of 
those infirmities and eccentricities which excite 
laughter; and Addison's power of turning either 
an absurd book or an absurd man into ridicule was 25 
unrivalled. Addison, however, serenely conscious 
of his superiority, looked with pity on his assail- 
ant, whose temper, naturally irritable and gloomy, 
had been soured by want, by controversy, and by 
literary failures. 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 215 

But among the young candidates for Addison's 
favor there was one distinguished by talents from 
the rest, and distinguished, we fear, not less by 
malignity and insincerity. Pope was only twenty- 

5 five. But his powers had expanded to their full 
maturity; and his best poem, the Rape of the 
Lock, hati recently been published. Of his genius 
Addison had always expressed high admiration. 
But Addison had early discerned, what might, 

10 indeed, have been discerned by an eye less pene- 
trating than his, that the diminutive, crooked, 
sickly boy was eager to revenge himself on society 
for the unkindness of nature. In the Spectator 
the Essay on Criticism had been praised with cor- 

15 dial warmth; but a gentle hint had been added 
that tlie writer of so excellent a poem would have 
done well to avoid ill-natured personalities. Pope, 
though evidently more galled by the censure tlian 
gratified by the praise, returned thanks for the 

20 admonition, and promised to profit by it. The 
two -writers continued to exchange civilities, coun- 
sel, and small good offices. Addison publicly 
extolled Pope's miscellaneous pieces, and Pope 
furnished Addison with a prologue. This did not 

25 last long. Pope hated Dennis, whom he had 
injured without provocation. The appearance of 
the Remarks on Cato gave the irritable poet an 
opportunity of venting his malice under the show 
of friendship; and such an opportunity could not 

30 but be welcome to a nature which was implacable 



216 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

in enmity, and which always preferred the tortuous 
to the straight path. He published, accordingly, 
the Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis. But 
Pope had mistaken his powers. He was a great 
master of invective and sarcasm; he could dissect 
a character in terse and sonorous couplets, brilliant 
with antithesis; but of dramatic talent he was 
altogether destitute. If he had written a lampoon 
on Dennis, such as that on Atticus or that on 
Sporus, the old grumbler would have been crushed. 
But Pope writing dialogue reseml)led — to borrow 
Horace's imagery and his own — a wolf, which, ■ 
instead of biting, should take to kicking, or a 
monkey which should try to sting. The Narrative 
is utterly contemptible. Of argument there is not 
even the show, and the jests are such as, if they 
were introduced into a farce, would call forth the 
hisses of the shilling gallery. Dennis raves about 
the di'ama, and the nurse thinks that he is calling 
for a dram. "There is," he cries, "no i^eripetia 
in the tragedy, no change of fortune, no change at 
all." "Pray, good sir, be not angry," says the 
old woman, "I'll fetch change." This is not 
exactly the pleasantry of Addison. 

There can be no doubt that Addison saw through 
this officious zeal, and felt himself deeply aggi'ieved 
by it. So foolish and spiteful a pamphlet could do 
him no good, and, if he were thought to have any 
hand in it, must do him harm. Gifted with 
incomparable powers of ridicule, he had never, 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 217 

even in self-defence, used those powers inhumanly 
or uncoiirteously ; and he was not disposed to let 
others make his fame and his interests a j^retext 
under which they might commit outrages from 
5 wiiich he had himself constantly abstained. He 
accordingly declared that he had no concern in the 
Narrative, that he disapproved of it, and that if 
he answered the Remarks, he would answer them 
like a gentleman ; and he took care to communi- 

10 cate this to Dennis. Pope was bitterly mortified, 

and to this transaction we are inclined to ascribe the 

hatred with which he ever after regarded Addison. 

In September, 1713, the Guardian ceased to 

appear. Steele had gone mad about politics. A 

15 general election had just taken place : he had been 
chosen member for Stockbridge, and lie fully 
expected to play a first part in Parliament. The 
immense success of the Tatler and Spectator had 
turned his head. He had been the editor of both 

20 those papers, and was not aware how entirely they 
owed their influence and popularity to the genius 
of his friend. His spirits, always violent, were 
now excited by vanity, ambition, and faction, to 
such a pitch that he every day committed some 

25 offence against good sense and good taste. All the 
discreet and moderate members of his own party 
regretted and condemned his folly. "I am in a 
thousand troubles," Addison wrote, "about poor 
Dick, and wish that his zeal for the public may not 

30 be ruinous to himself. But he has sent me word 



218 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

that he is determined to go on, and that any advice 
I may give him in this particular will have no 
weight with him." 

Steele set up a political paper called the Efig- 
lishman, which, as it was not supported by contri- 5 
butions from Addison, completely failed. By this 
work, by some other writings of the same kind, 
and by the airs which he gave himself at the first 
meeting of the new Parliament, he made the Tories 
so angry that they determined to expel him. The lo 
Whigs stood by him gallantly, but were unable to 
save him. The vote of expulsion was regarded by 
all dispassionate men as a tyrannical exercise of the 
power of the majority. But Steele's violence and 
folly, though they by no means justified the steps 15 
which his enemies took, had completely disgusted 
his friends ; nor did he ever regain the place which 
he had held in the public estimation. 

Addison about this time conceived the design of 
adding an eighth volume to the Spectator. In 20 
June, 1714, the first number of the new series 
appeared, and during about six months three 
papers were published weekly. Nothing can be 
more striking than the contrast between the Ung- 
lishman and the eighth volume of the Spectator^ 25 
between Steele without Addison and Addison with- 
out Steele. The Englishman is forgotten: the 
eighth volume of the Spectator contains, perhaps, 
the finest essays, both serious and playful, in the 
English language. 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 219 

Before this volume was completed, the death of 
Anne produced an enth'e change in the administra- 
tion of public affairs. The blow fell suddenly. 
It found the Tory party distracted by internal 

5 feuds, and unprepared for any gi^eat effort. 
Ilarley had just been disgraced. Bolingbroke, it 
was supposed, would be the chief minister. But 
the Queen was on her death-bed before the white 
staff had been given, and her last public act was to 

10 deliver it with a feeble hand to the Duke of 
Shrewsbury. The emergency produced a coalition 
between all sections of public men who were 
attached to the Protestant succession. George the 
First was proclaimed without opposition. A coun- 

15 cil, in which the leading whigs had seats, took the 
direction of affairs till the new King should arrive. 
The first act of the Lords Justices was to appoint 
Addison their secretary. 

There is an idle tradition that he was directed 

20 to prepare a letter to the King, that he could not 
satisfy himself as to the stjde of this composition, 
and that the Lords Justices called in a clerk, who 
at once did what was wanted. It is not strange 
that a story so flattering to mediocrity should be 

25 popular; and we are sorry to deprive dunces of 
their consolation. But the truth must be told. 
It was well observed by Sir James Mackintosh, 
whose knowledge of these times was unequalled, 
that Addison never, in any official document, 

30 affected wit or eloquence, and that his despatches 



220 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 



I 



are, without exception, remarkable for unpretend- 
ing simplicity. Everybody who knows with what 
ease Addison's finest essays were produced, must 
be convinced that, if well-turned phrases had been 
wanted, he would have had no difficulty in finding 5 
them. We are, however, inclined to believe, that 
the story is not absolutely without a foundation. 
It may well be that Addison did not know, till he 1 
had consulted experienced clerks who remembered » 
the times when William the Third was absent on lo 
the Continent, in what form a letter from the } 
Council of Eegency to the King ought to be drawn. » 
We think it very likely that the ablest statesmen of 
our time. Lord John Kussell, Sir Kobert Peel, 
Lord Palmerston, for example, would, in similar is 
circumstances, be found quite as ignorant. Every 
office has some little mysteries which the dullest 
man may learn with a little attention, and which . 
the greatest man cannot possibly know by intui- | 
tion. One paper must be signed by the chief of 20 
the department ; another by his deputy; to a third 
the royal sign-manual is necessary. One commu- 
nication is to be registered, and another is not. 
One sentence must be in black ink, and another 
in red ink. If the ablest Secretary for Ireland 25 
were moved to the India Board, if the ablest 
President of the India Board were moved to the , 
War Office, he would require instruction on | 
points like these; and we do not doubt that 
Addison required such instruction when he be- 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 221 

came, for the first time, Secretary to the Lords 
Justices. 

George the First took possession of his kingdom 
without opposition, A new ministry was formed, 

5 and a new Parliament favorable to the Whigs 
chosen. Sunderland was appointed Lord Lieuten- 
ant of Ireland; and Addison again wert to Dublin 
as Chief Secretary. 

At Dublin Swift resided; and there was much 

10 speculation about the way in which the Dean and 
the Secretary would behave towards each other. 
The relations which existed between these remark- 
able men form an interesting and pleasing portion 
,of literary liistory. They had early attached them- 

1^ selves to the same political party and to the same 
patrons. While Anne's Whig ministry was in 
power, the visits of Swift to London and the 
official residence of Addison in Ireland had given 
them opportunities of knowing each other. They 

20 were the two shrewdest observers of their age. But 
their observations on each other had led them to 
favorable conclusions. Swift did full justice to 
the rare powers of conversation which were latent 
under the bashful deportment of Addison. Addi- 

25 son, on the other hand, discerned much good 
nature under the severe look and manner of Swift; 
and, indeed, the Swift of 1708 and the Swift of 
1738 were two very different men. 

But the paths of the two friends diverged 

30 widely. The Whig statesmen loaded Addison 



222 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

with solid benefits. They praised Swift, asked 
him to dinner, and did nothing more for him. 
His profession laid them under a difficulty. In 
the state they could not promote him; and they 
had reason to fear that, by bestowing prefel-ment 5 
in the church on the author of the Tale of a Tub, 
they might give scandal to the public, which had 
no high opinion of their orthodoxy. He did not 
make fair allowance for the difficulties which pre- 
vented Halifax and Somers from serving him, lo 
thought himself an ill-used man, sacrificed honor 
and consistency to revenge, joined the Tories, and 
became their most formidable champion. He 
soon found, however, that his old friends were 
less to blame than he had supposed. The dislike is 
with which the Queen and the heads of the church 
regarded him was insurmountable ; and it was with 
the greatest difficulty that he obtained an ecclesias- 
tical dignity of no great value, on condition of 
fixing his residence in a country which he de- 20 
tested. 

Difference of political opinion had produced, not 
indeed a quarrel, but a coolness between Swift and 
Addison. They at length ceased altogether to see 
each other. Y"et there was between them a tacit 25 
compact like that between the hereditary guests in 
the Iliad : — J 

'Eyxea S' aAA^Awi' a\eiafie6a Koi Si' OjOiiAov ^^^^J 

IIoAAoi ju.61/ yap e/u.ol TpiLe? /cAeiTOi t' eTrtKoupoi, 
Kreiveiv, 6v Ke fled? ye iropjj Koi nocral Kixeiu), 30 

"^^oAAol 5' av iTo'i 'A\aLo\, ecaipe/aei' ov Ke Svyriai,. 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 223 

It is not strange that Addison, who calumniated 
and insulted nobod}^ should not have calumniated 
or insulted Swift. But it is remarkable that 
Swift, to whom neither genius nor virtue was 

5 sacred, and who generally seemed to find, like most 
other renegades, a peculiar pleasure in attacking 
old friends, should have shown so much respect 
and tenderness to Addison. 

Fortune had now changed. The accession of 

10 the house of Hanover had secured in England the 
liberties of the people, and in Ireland the dominion 
of the Protestant caste. To that caste Swift was 
more odious than any other man. He was hooted 
and even pelted in the streets of Dublin ; and 

15 could not venture to ride along the strand for his 
health without the attendance of armed servants. 
Many whom he had formerly served now libelled 
and insulted him. At this time Addison arrived. 
He had been advised not to show the smallest civil- 

20 ity to the Dean of St. Patrick's. He had an- 
swered, Avith admirable spirit, that it might be 
necessary for men whose fidelity to their party was 
suspected, to hold no intercourse with political 
opponents; but that one who had been a steady 

25 Whig in the worst times might venture, when the 
good cause was triumphant, to shake hands with 
an old friend who was one of the vanquished Tories. 
His kindness was soothing to the proud and cruelly 
wounded spirit of Swift ; and the two great satirists 

30 resumed their habits of friendly intercourse. 



224 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

Those associates of Addison whose political 
opinions agreed with his shared his good fortune. 
He took Tickell with him to Ireland. He pro- 
cured for Budgell a lucrative place in the sanTe 
kingdom. Ambrose Philips^ was provided for in 
England. Steele had injured himself so much by 
his eccentricity and perverseness, that he obtained 
but a very small part of what he thought his due. 
lie was, however, knighted; he had a place in the 
household; and he subsequently received other 
marks of favor from the court. 

Addison did not remain long in Ireland. In 
1715 he quitted his secretaryship for a seat at the 
Board of Trade. In the same year his comedy of 
the Drummer was brought on the stage. The 
name of the author was not announced; the piece 
was coldly received; and some critics have ex- 
pressed a doubt whether it were really Addison's. 
To us the evidence, both external and internal, 
seems decisive. It is not in Addison's best man- 
ner; but it contains numerous passages which no 
other writer known to us could have produced. It 
was again performed after Addison's death, and, 
being known to be his, was loudly applauded. 

Towards the close of the year 1715, while the 
Rebellion was still raging in Scotland, Addison 
published the first number of a paper called the 
Fi^eelioldei'. Among his political works the Free- 
liolder is entitled to the first place. Even in the 
Spectator there are few serious papers nobler than 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 225 

the character of his friend Lord Somers, and cer- 
tainly no satirical papers superior to those in which 
the Tory fox-hunter is introduced. This charac- 
ter is the original of Squire Western, and is drawn 

5 with all Fielding's force, and with a delicacy of 
which Fielding was altogether destitute. As none 
of Addison's works exhibits stronger marks of his 
genius than the Freeholder^ so none does more 
honor to his moral character. It is difficult to 

10 extol too highly the candor and humanity of a 
political writer whom even the excitement of civil 
war cannot hurry into unseemly violence. Oxford, 
it is well known, was then the stronghold of Tory- 
ism. The High Street had been repeatedly lined 

15 with bayonets in order to keep down the disaffected 
gownsmen; and traitors pursued by the messen- 
gers of the government had been concealed in the 
garrets of several colleges. Yet the admonition 
which, even under such circumstances, Addison 

20 addressed to the university, is singularly gentle, 
respectful, and even affectionate. Indeed, he 
could not find it in his heart to deal harshly even 
with imaginary persons. His fox-hunter, though 
ignorant, stupid, and violent, is at heart a good 

25 fellow, and is at last reclaimed by the clemency of 
the king. Steele was dissatisfied with his friend's 
moderation, and, though he acknowledged that the 
Freeholder was excellently written, complained 
that the ministry played on a lute when it was 

80 necessary to blow the trumpet. He accordingly 



226 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

determined to execute a flourish after his own 
fashion, and tried to rouse the public spirit of the 
nation by means of a paper called the Toivn TalTc^ 
which is now as utterly forgotten as his English- 
man^ as his Crisis, as his Letter to the Bailiff of 
Stockbridge, as his Reader, in short, as everything 
that he wrote without the help of Addison. 

In the same year in which the Drummer was 
acted, and in which the first numbers of the Free- 
holder' appeared, the estrangement of Pope and 
Addison became complete. Addison had from the 
first seen that Pope was false and malevolent. 
Pope had discovered that Addison was jealous. 
The discovery was made in a strange manner. 
Pope had written the Rape of the Lock, in two 
cantos, without supernatural machinery. These 
two cantos had been loudly applauded, and by 
none more loudly than by Addison. Then Pope i 
thought of the Sylphs and Gnomes, Ariel, Momen- \ 
tilla, Crispissa, and Umbriel, and resolved to inter- 20 
weave the Rosicrucian mythology with the original 
fabric. He asked Addison's advice. Addison said 
that the poem as it stood was a delicious little 
thing, and entreated Pope not to run the risk of 
marring what was so excellent in trying to mend 25 
it. Pope afterward declared that this insidious I 
counsel first opened his eyes to the baseness of him f 
who gave it. * 

Now there can be no doubt that Pope's plan was 
most ingenious, and that he afterwards executed it sc 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 227 

witli gi'eat skill and success. But does it neces- 
sarily follow that Addison's advice was bad? And 
if Addison's advice was bad, does it necessarily 
follow that it was given from bad motives? If a 
5 friend were to ask us whether we would advise him 
to risk his all in a lottery of which the chances 
were ten to one against him, we should do our 
best to dissuade him from running such a risk. 
Even if he were so lucky as to get the thirty thou- 

'10 sand pound prize, we should not admit that we had 
counselled him ill ; and we should certainly think 
it the height of injustice in him to accuse us of 
having been actuated by malice. We think Addi- 
son's advice good advice. It rested on a sound 

15 principle, the result of long and wide experience. 
The general rule undoubtedly is that, when a suc- 
cessful work of imagination has been produced, it 
should not be recast. We cannot at this moment 
call to mind a single instance in which this rule 

20 has been transgressed with happy effect, except the 
instance of the Rape of the Lock. Tasso recast 
his Jerusalem. Akenside recast his Pleasures of 
the Imagination, and his Epistle to Curio. - Pope 
himself, emboldened no doubt by the success with 

25 which he had expanded and remodelled the Rape 
of the Lock, made the same experiment on the 
Dunciad. All these attempts failed. Who was to 
foresee that Pope would, once in his life, be able 
to do what he could not himself do twice, and what 

80 nobody else has ever done? 



228 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

Addison's advice was good. But had it been 
bad, why should we pronounce it dishonest? Scott 
tells us that one of his best friends predicted th^ 
failure of Waverley. Herder adjured Goethe not 
to take so uilpromising a subject as Faust. Hume . 
tried to dissuade Robertson from writing the His- • 
tory of Charles the Fifth. Nay, Pope himself was | 
one of those who prophesied that Cato would 
never succeed on the stage, and advised Addison 
to print it without risking a representation. But ifl| 
Scott, Goethe, Robertson, Addison, had the good ! 
sense and generosity to give their advisers credit i 
for the best intentions. Pope's heart was not of | 
the same kind with theirs. ! 

In 1715, while he was engaged in translating the id 
Iliad, he met Addison at a coffee-house. Philips i 
and Budgell were there; but their sovereign got 
rid of them, and asked Pope to dine with him 
alone. After dinner, Addison said that he lay 
under a difficulty which he wished to explain. 20 
"Tick ell," he said, "translated some time ago the 
first book of the Iliad. I have jjromised to look it 
over and correct it. I cannot, therefore, ask to 
see yours, for that would be double-dealing." 
Pope made a civil reply, and begged that his 23 
second book might have the advantage of Addi- 
son's revision. Addison readily agreed, looked 
over the second book, and sent it back with warm 
commendations. 

Tickell's version of tlie first book appeared soon »\ 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 229 

after this conversation. In the preface, all rivalry 
was earnestly disclaimed. Tickell declared that he 
should not go on with the Iliad. That enterprise 
he should leave to powers which he admitted to be 

5 superior to his OAvn. His only view, he said, in 
publishing this specimen was to bespeak the favor 
of the public to a translation of the Odyssey, in 
which he had made some progress. 

Addison, and Addison's devoted followers, pro- 

10 nounced both the versions good, but maintained 
that Tickell's had more of the original. The 
town gave a decided preference to Pope's. We do 
not think it worth while to settle such a question 
of precedence. Neither of the rivals can be said 

15 to have translated the Iliad, unless indeed, the 
word translation be used in the sense which it 
bears in the Midsummer Night's Dream. Whon 
Bottom makes his appearance with an ass's hei^d 
instead of his own, Peter Quince exclaims, "Bless 

20 thee! Bottom, bless thee! thou art translated.*' 
In this sense, undoubtedly, the readers of eithe/ 
Pope or Tickell may very properly exclaim, "Bles^ 
thee! Homer; thou art translated indeed." 

Our readers will, we hope, agree with us in 

25 thinking that no man in Addison's situation could 
have acted more fairly and kindly, both towards 
Pope, and towards Tickell, than he appears to 
have done. But an odious suspicion had sprung 
up in the mind of Pope. He fancied, and he 

80 soon firmly believed, that there was a deep con- 



230 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

spiracy against his fame and his fortunes. The 
work on which he had staked his reputation was 
to be depreciated. The subscription, on which 
rested his hopes of a competence, was to be 
defeated. With this Yiew Addison liad made a 5 
rival translation : Tickell had consented to father 
it; and the wits of Button's had united to puff it. 

Is there any external evidence to support this 
grave accusation? The answer is short. There is 
absolutely none. lo 

Was there any internal evidence which proved 
Addison to be the author of this version? Was it 
a work which Tickell was incapable of producing? 
Surely not. Tickell was a fellow of a college at 
Oxford, and must be supposed to have been able to 15 
construe the Iliad ; and he was a better versifier 
than his friend. We are not aware that Pope pre- 
tended to have discovered any turns of expression 
peculiar to Addison. Had such turns of ex- 
pression been discovered, they would be sufficiently 2$ 
accounted for by supposing Addison to have cor- y 
rected his friend's lines, as he owned that he had .' 
done. j 

Is there anything in the character of the accused 
persons which makes the accusation probable? We 25 
answer confidently — nothing. Tickell was long 
after this time described by Pope himself as a very 
fair and worthy man. Addison had been, during j 
many years, before the public. Literary rivals, f 
political opponents, had kept their eyes on him. sA 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 231 

But neither envy nor faction, in their utmost 
rage, had ever imputed to him a single deviation 
from the laws of honor and of social morality. 
Had he been indeed a man meanly jealous of 
5 fame, and capable of stooping to base and 
wicked arts for the purpose of injuring his com- 
petitors, would his vices have remained latent 
so long? He was a writer of tragedy: had he 
ever injured Eowe? He was a WTiter of com- 

10 edy: had he not done ample justice to Congreve, 
and given valuable help to Steele? He was a 
pamphleteer : have not his good nature and gener- 
osity been acknowledged by Swift, his rival in 
fame and his adversary in politics? 

15 That Tickell should have been guilty of a villany 
seems to us highly improbable. That Addison 
should have been guilty of a villany seems to us 
highly improbable. But that these two men 
should have conspired together to commit a villany 

20 seems to us improbable in a tenfold degree. All 
that is known to us of their intercourse tends to 
prove, that it was not the intercourse of two 
accomplices in crime. These are some of the lines 
in which Tickell poured forth his sorrow over the 

25 coffin of Addison : — 

"Or dost thou warn poor mortals left behind, 
A task well suited to thy gentle mind ? 
Oh, if sometimes thy spotless form descend, 
To me thine aid, thou guardian genius, lend, 
30 When rage misguides me. or when fear alarms, 



23 2 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

When pain distresses, or when pleasure charms, 

In silent whisperings purer thoughts impart, 

And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart ; 

Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before. 

Till bliss shall join, nor death can part us more." e 

In what words, we should like to know, did this 
guardian genius invite his pupil to join in a plan 
such as the editor of the Satirist would hardly 
dare to propose to the editor of the Age? 

We do not accuse Pope of bringing an accusation lo 
which he knew to be false. We have not the 
smallest doubt that he believed it to be true ; and 
the evidence on which he believed it he found 
in his own bad heart. His own life was one long 
series of tricks, as mean and as malicious as that of is 
which he suspected Addison and Tickell. He was 
all stiletto and mask. To injure, to insult, and to 
save himself from the consequences of injury and 
insult by lying and equivocating, was the habit of 
his life. He published a lampoon on the Duke of 20 
Chandos; he was taxed with it; and he lied and 
equivocated. He published a lampoon on Aaron 
Hill; he was taxed with it; and he lied and 
equivocated. He published a still fouler lampoon 
on Lady Mary Wortley Montague; he was taxed 35 
with it; and he lied with more than usual effront- 
ery and vehemence. He puffed himself and 
abused his enemies under feigned names. He 
robbed himself of his own letters, and then raised 
the line and cry after them. Besides his frauds of 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 233 

malignity, of fear, of interest, and of vanity, there 
were frauds which he seems to have committed 
from love of fraud alone. He had a habit of 
stratagem, a pleasure in outwitting all who came 

5 near liim. Whatever his object might be, the 
indirect road to it was that which he preferred. 
For Bolingbroke, Pope undoubtedly felt as much 
love and veneration as it was in his nature to feel 
for any human being. Yet Pope was scarcely dead 

10 when it was discovered that, from no motive except 
the mere love of artifice, he had been guilty of an 
act of gi'oss j^erfidy to Bolingbroke. 

Nothing was more natural than that such a man 
as this should attribute to others that which he 

15 felt within himself. A plain, probable, coherent 
explanation is frankly given to him. He is certain 
that it is all a romance. A line of conduct 
scrupulously fair, and even friendly, is pursued 
towards him. He is convinced that it is merely a 

20 cover for a vile intrigue by which he is to be dis- 
graced and ruined. It is vain to ask him for 
proofs. He has none, and wants none, except 
those which he carries in his own bosom. 

Whether Pope's malignity at length provoked 

25 Addison to retaliate for the first and last time, 
cannot now be known with certainty. We have 
only Pope's story, which runs thus. A pamphlet 
appeared containing some reflections which stung 
Pope to the quick. What those reflections were, 

30 and whether they were reflections of which he had 



H 



234 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

a right to complain, we have now no means of 
deciding. The Earl of Wai'wick, a foolish and 
vicious lad, who regarded Addison with the feel- 
ings with which such lads generally regard their 
best friends, told Pope, truly or falsely, that this 5 i 
pamphlet had been written by Addison's direction. 
When we consider what a tendency stories have to 
grow, in passing even from one honest man to 
another honest man, and when we consider that to 
the name of honest man neither Pope nor the Earl if 
of Warwick had a claim, we are not disposed to 
attach much importance to this anecdote. 

It is certain, however, that Pope was furious. 
He had already sketched the character of Atticus 
in prose. In his anger he turned this prose into 
the brilliant and energetic lines which everybody 
knows by heart, or ought to know by heart, and 
sent them to Addison. One charge which Pope 
has enforced with great skill is probably not with- 
out foundation. Addison was, we are inclined to 20 
believe, too fond of presiding over a circle of 
humble friends. Of the other imputations which 
these famous lines are intended to convey, scarcely 
one has ever been proved to be just, and some are 
certainly false. That Addison was not in the 25 
habit of "damning with fainfe praise" appears 
from innumerable passages in his writings, and 
from none more than from those in which he 
mentions Pope. And it is not merely unjust, but 
ridiculous, to describe a man who made the fortune 3' 



Ji 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 235 

of almost every one of his intimate friends, as "so 
obliging that he ne'er obliged." 

That Addison felt the sting of Popejs satire 
keenly, we cannot doubt. That he was conscious 

5 of one of the weaknesses with which he was re- 
proached is highly probable. But his heart, we 
firmly believe, acquitted him of the gravest part of 
the accusation. He acted like himself. As a 
satirist he was, at his own weapons, more than 

10 Pope's match, and he would have been at no loss 
for topics. A distorted and diseased body, 
tenanted by a yet more distorted and diseased 
mind; spite and envy thinly disguised by senti- 
ments as benevolent and noble as those which Sir 

15 Peter Teazle admired in Mr. Joseph Surface; a 
feeble, sickly licentiousness; an odious love of 
filthy and noisome images; these Avere things 
which a genius less powerful than that to which 
we owe the Spectator conld easily have held up to 

20 the mirth and hatred of mankind. Addison had, 
moreover, at his command,, other means of venge- 
ance which a bad man would not have sci;upled 
to use. He was powerful in the state. Pope was 
a Catholic; and, in those times, a rninister would 

25 have found it easy to harass the most innocent 
Catholic by innumerable petty vexations. Pope, 
near twenty years later, said that "through the 
lenity of the government alone he could live with 
comfort." "Consider," he exclaimed, "the injury 

30 that a man of high rank and credit may do to a 



236 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

private person, under penal laws and many other 
disadvantages." It is pleasing to reflect that the 
only revenge which Addison took was to insert in 
the Freeliolder a warm encomium on the transla- 
tion of tlie Iliad, and to exhort all lovers of learn- 
ing to put down their names as subscribers. 
There could be no doubt, he said, from the speci- 
mens already 2:>Liblished, that the masterly hand of 
Pope would do as much for Homer as Dryden had 
done for Virgil. From that time to the end of his 
life, he always treated Pope, by Pope's own 
acknowledgment, with justice. Friendship was, 
of com'se, at an end. 

One reason which induced the Earl of Warwick 
to play the ignominious part of talebearer on this i^ 
occasion, may have been his dislike of the mar- 
riage which was about to take place between his 
mother and Addison. The Countess Dowager, a i 
daughter of the old and honorable family of the f j 
Middletons of Chirk, a family which, in any 20 
country but ours, would be called noble, resided at 1 
Holland House. Addison had, during some years, I 
occupied at Chelsea a small dwelling, once the || 
abode of Nell Gwynn. Chelsea is now a district of * 
London, and Holland House may be called a town 25 
residence. But, in the days of Anne and George 1| 
the First, milkmaids and sportsmen wandered I 
between gi'een hedges, and over fields bright with ■ ! 
daisies, from Kensington almost to the shore of the 
Thames. Addison and Lady Warwick were coun- 8(i 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 237 

try neighbors, and became intimate friends. The 
great wit and scholar tried to allure the young 
lord from the fashionable amusements of beating 
watchmen, breaking windows, and rolling women 

5 in hogsheads down Holborn Hill, to the study of 
letters and the practice of virtue. These well- 
meant exertions did little good, however, either to 
the disciple or to the master. Lord Warwick 
grew up a rake; and Addison fell in love. The 

10 mature beauty of the countess has been celebrated 
by poets in language which, after a very large 
allowance has been made for flattery, would lead us 
to believe that she was a fine woman ; and her rank 
doubtless heightened her attractions. The court- 

15 ship was long. The hopes of the lover appear to 
have risen and fallen with the fortunes of his 
party. His attachment was at length matter of 
such notoriety that, when he visited Ireland for the 
last time, Rowe addressed some consolatory verses 

20 to the Chloe of Holland House. It strikes us as a 

(little strange that, in these verses, Addison should 
be called Lycidas, a name of singularly evil omen 
for a swain just about to cross St. George's 
Channel. 
25 At length Chloe capitulated. Addison Avas 
indeed able to treat with her on equal terms. He 
had reason to expect preferment even higher than 
that which he had attained. He had inherited 
the fortune of a brother who died Governor of 
30 Madras. He had purchased an estate in Warwick- 



238 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

shire, and had been welcomed to his domain in 
very tolerable verse by one of the neighboring 
squires, the poetical fox-hunter, William Somer- 
ville. In August, 1716, the newspapers announced 
that Joseph Addison, Esquire, famous for many 5 
excellent works, both in verse and prose, had 
espoused the Countess Dowager of Warwick. 

He now fixed his abode at Holland House, a 
house which can boast of a greater number of 
inmates distinguished in political and literary his- 10 
tory than any other private dwelling ,in England. 
His jiortrait still hangs there. The features are 
pleasing; the complexion is remarkably fair; but 
in the expression we trace rather the gentleness of 
his disposition than the force and keenness of his 15 
hitellect. 

Not long after his marriage he reached the 
height of civil greatness. The Whig Government . 
had, during some time, been torn by internal dis- ' 
sensions. Lord Townshend led one section of the 20 
Cabinet, Lord Sunderland the other. At length, 
in the spring of 1717, Sunderland triumphed. 
Townshend retu-ed from office, and was accom- 
panied by Walpole and Cowper. Sunderland pro- 
ceeded to reconstruct the Ministry; and Addison 25 
was appointed Secretary of State. It is certain tliat 
the Seals were pressed upon him, and were at first 
declined by him. Men equally versed in official 
business might easily have been found; and his 
colleagues knew that they could not expect assist- so 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 239 

ance from him in debate. He owed his elevation 
to his popuhirity, to his stainless probity, and to 
his literary fame. 

But scarcely had Addison entered the Cabinet 
when his health began to fail. From one serious 
attack he recovered in the autumn; and his 
recovery was celebrated in Latin verses, worthy of 
his own pen, by A'incent Bourne, who was then at 
Trinity College, Cambridge. A relapse soon took 
place; and, in the following spring, Addison was 
prevented by a severe asthma from discharging the 
duties of his post. He resigned it, and was suc- 
ceeded by his friend Craggs, a young man whose 
natural parts, though little improved by cultiva- 
tion, were quick and showy, whose graceful person 
and winning manners had made him generally 
acceptable in society, and who, if he had lived, 
would probably have been the most formidable of 
all the rivals of Walpole, 

As yet there was no Joseph Hume. The minis- 
ters, therefore, were able to bestow on Addison a 
retiring pension of fifteen hundred pounds a year. 
In what form this pension was given we are not 
told by the biographers, and have not time to 
inquu'e. But it is certain that Addison did not 
vacate his seat in the House of Commons. 

Eest of mind and body seemed to have reestab- 
lished his health; and he thanked God, with 
cheerful piety, for having set him free both from 
his office and from his asthma. Many years 



240 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 



seemed to be before him, and lie meditated many • 
works, a tragedy on the death of Socrates, a trans- 
lation of the Psalms, a treatise on the evidences of 
Christianity. Of this last performance, a part, 
which we could well spare, has come down to us. s 

But the "fatal complaint soon returned, and 
gradually prevailed against all the resources of 
medicine. It is melancholy to think that the last 
months of such a life should have been overclouded 
both by domestic and by political vexations. A lo 
tradition which began early, which has been gener- j 
ally received, and to which we have nothing to 
oppose, has represented his wife as an arrogant 
and imperious woman. It is said that, till his 
health failed him, he was glad to escape from the is 
Countess Dowager and her magnificent dining- 
room, blazing with the gilded devices of the house 
of Rich, to some tavern where he could enjoy a 
laugh, a talk about Virgil and Boileau, and a 
bottle of claret with the friends of his happier 20 
days. All those friends, however, were not left to 
him. Sir Richard Steele had been gradually 
estranged by various causes. He considered him- 
self as one who, in evil times, had braved martyr- 
dom for his political principles, and demanded, 25 
when the Whig party was triumphant, a large 
compensation for what he had suffered when it was 
militant. The Whig leaders took a very different 
view of his claims. They thought that he had, by 
his own petulance and folly, brought them as well 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 241 

as himself into trouble, and though they did not 
absolutely neglect him, doled out favors to him 
with a sparing hand. It was natural that he 
should be angry with them, and especially angry 

5 with Addison. But what above all seems to have^ 
disturbed Sir Richard, was the elevation of Tickell, 
who, at thirty, was made by Addison Undersecre- 
tary of State ; while the editor of the Tatler and 
SiMctatov^ the author of the Crisis, the member 

10 for Stockbridge who had been persecuted for firm 
adherence to the house of Hanover, was, at near 
fifty, forced, after many solicitations and com- 
plaints, to content himself with a share in the pat- 
ent of Drury Lane Theatre. Steele himself says, in 

15 his celebrated letter to Congreve, that Addison, by 
his preference of Tickell, "incurred the warmest 
resentment of other gentlemen;" and everything 
seems to indicate that, of those resentful gentle- 
men, Steele was himself one. 

20 * While poor Sir Richard was brooding over what 
he considered as Addison's unkindness, a new 
cause of quarrel arose. The Whig party, already 
divided against itself, was rent by a new schism. 
The celebrated bill for limiting the number of peers 

25 had been brought in. The proud Duke of Somer- 
set, first in rank of all the nobles whose origin 
permitted them to sit in Parliament, was the 
ostensible author of the measure. But it was sup- 
ported, and, in truth, devised by the Prime 

30 Minister. 



242 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

We are satisfied that the bill was most perni- 
cious ; and we fear that the motives which induced 
Sunderland to frame it were not honorable to 
him. But we cannot deny that it was supported by 
many of the best and wisest men of that age. 
Nor was this strange. The royal prerogative 
had, within the memory of the generation then 
in the vigor of life, been so grossly abused, 
that it was still regarded with a jealousy which, 
when the peculiar situation of the House of : 
Brunswick is considered, may perhaps be called 
immoderate. The particular prerogative of creat- 
ing peers had, in the opinion of the Whigs, been 
grossly abused by Queen Anne's last Ministry; and 
even the Tories admitted that her majesty in 15 
swamping, as it has since been called, the Upper 
House, had done what only an extreme case could 
justify. The theory of the English constitution, 
according to many high authorities, v/as that three 
independent powers, the sovereign, the nobility, 30^ 
and the commons, ought constantly to act as checks j 
on each other. If this theory were sound, it f 
seemed to follow that to put one of these powers 
under the absolute control of the other two was 
absurd. But if the number of peers were un- 25 
limited, it could not well be denied that the Upper 
House was under the absolute control of the Crown 
and the Commons, and was indebted only to their 
moderation for any power which it might be 
suffered to retain. 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 243 

Steele took part with the Opposition, Addison 
with the ministers. Steele, in a paper called the 
Plebeian^ vehemently attacked the bill. Sunder- 
land called for help on Addison, and Addison 

5 obeyed the call. In a paper called the Old Whig^ 
he answered, and indeed refuted Steele's argu- 
ments. It seems to us that the premises of both 
the controversialists were unsound, that, on those 
premises, Addison reasoned well and Steele ill, and 

10 that consequently Addison brought out a false 
conclusion, while Steele blundered upon the truth. 
In style, in wit, and in politeness, Addison main- 
tained his superiority, though the Old Whig is by 
no means one of his happiest performances. 

15 At first, both the anonymous opponents observed 
the laws of propriety. But at length Steele so far 
forgot himself as to tlirow an odious imputation on 
the morals of the chiefs of the administration. 
Addison replied with severity, but, in our opinion, 

20 with less severity than was due to so grave an 
offence against morality and decorum ; nor did he, 
in his just anger, forget for a moment the laws of 
good taste and good breeding. One calumny which 
has been often repeated, and never yet contradicted, 

25 it is our duty to expose. It is asserted in the 
Biograpliia Britannica^ that Addison designated 
Steele as "little Dicky." This assertion was 
repeated by Johnson, who had never seen the Old 
WJiig, and was therefore excusable. It has also 

30 been repeated by Miss Aikin, who has seen the Old 



244 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

Wliig, and for whom therefore there is less excuse. 
Now, it is true that the words "little Dicky" occur 
in the Old Whig, and that Steele's name was 
Eichard. It is equally true that the words ''little 
Isaac" occur in the Duenna, and that Newton's 
name was Isaac. But we confidently affirm that 
Addison's little Dicky had no more to do with 
Steele, than Sheridan's little Isaac with Newton 
If we apply the words "little Dicky" to Steele, we' 
deprive a very lively and ingenious passage, not lo 
only of all its wit, but of all its meaning. Little 
Dicky was the nickname of Henry Norris, an 
actor of remarkably small stature, but of gi-eat 
humor, who played the usurer Gomez, then a most 
popular part, in Dryden's Spanish Friar. - 15 

The merited reproof which Steele had received, 
though softened by some kind and courteous 
expressions, galled him bitterly. He replied with 
little force and great acrimony ; but no rejoinder 
appeared. Addison was fast hastening to his 20 
grave; and had, we may well suppose, little dis- 
position to prosecute a quarrel with an old friend. 
His complaint had terminated in dropsy. He 
bore up long and manfully. But at length he 
abandoned all hope, dismissed his physicians, and 25 
calmly prepared himself to die. 

His works he intrusted to the care of Tickell, 
and dedicated them a very few days before his 
death to Craggs, in a letter written with the sweet 
and graceful eloquence of a Saturday's Spectator. 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 245 

In this, his last composition, he alluded to his 
approaching end- in words so manly, so cheerful, 
and so tender, that it is difficult to read them 
without tears. At the same time he earnestly 
5 recommended the interests of Tickell to the care 
of Craggs. 

Within a few hours of the time at which this 
dedication was written, Addison sent to beg Gay, 
who was then living by his wits about town, to 
10 come to Holland House. Gay went, and was 
received with great kindness. To his amazement 
his forgiveness was implored by the dying man. 
Poor Gay, the most good-natured and simple of 
mankind, could not imagine what he had to f or- 
is give. There was, however, some wrong, the 
remembrance of which weighed on Addison's 
mind, and which he declared himself anxious to 
repair. He was in a state of extreme exhaustion ; 
and the parting was doubtless a friendly one on 
20 both sides. Gay supposed that some plan to 
serve him had been in agitation at Court, and had 
been frustrated by Addison's influence. Nor is 
this improbable. Gay had paid assiduous court 
to the royal family. But in the Queen's days he 
25 had been the eulogist of Bolingbroke, and was still 
connected with many Tories. It is not strange 
that Addison, while heated by conflict, should 
have thought himself justified in obstructing the 
preferment of one whom he might regard as a 
30 political enemy. Neither is it strange that, when 



246 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

reviewing his whole life, and earnestly scrutinizing 
all his motives, he should think that he had acted 
an unkind and ungenerous part, in using his 
power against a distressed man of letters, who was 
as harmless and as helpless as a child. £ 

One inference may be drawn from this anecdote. 
It appears that Addison, on his death-bed, called 
himself to a strict account, and was not at ease till 
he had asked pardon for an injury which it was 
not even suspected that he had committed, for an lo 
injury which would have caused disquiet only to a 
very tender conscience. Is it not then reasonable 
to infer that, if he had really been guilty of form- 
ing a base conspiracy against the fame and fortunes 
of a rival, he would have expressed some remorse is 
for so serious a crime? But it is unnecessary to 
multiply arguments and evidence for the defence, 
when there is neither argumeM nor evidence for 
the accusation. 

The last moments of Addison were perfectly 2C 
serene. His interview with his son-in-law is uni- 
versally known. "See," he said, "how a Chris- 
tian can die." The piety of Addison was, in 
truth, of a singularly cheerful character. The 
feeling which predominates in all his devotional 25 
wi'itings is gratitude. God was to him the allwise 
and allpowerful friend who had watched over his 
cradle with more than maternal tenderness; who 
had listened to his cries before they could form 
themselves in prayer ; who had preserved his youth sc 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 247 

from the snares of yice; who had made his cup 
run over with worldly blessings ; who had doubled 
the value of those blessings by bestowing a thank- 
ful heart to enjoy them, and dear friends to 

5 partake them; who had rebuked the waves of 
the Ligurian gulf, had purified the autumnal air 
of the Campagna, and had restrained the ava- 
lanches of Mont Cenis. Of the Psalms, his 
favorite was that which represents the Kuler of a]i 

10 things under the endearing image of a shepherd, 
whose crook guides the flock safe, through gloomy 
and desolate glens, to meadows well watered and 
rich with herbage. On that goodness to which he 
ascribed all the happiness of his life, he relied in 

15 the hour of death with the love that casteth out 
fear. He died on the seventeenth of June, 1719. 
He had just entered on his forty-eighth year. 

His body lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, 
and was borne thence to the Abbey at dead of 

20 night. The choir sang a funeral hymn. Bishop 
Atterbury, one of those Tories who had loved and 
honored the most accomplished of the Whigs, met 
the corpse, and led the procession by torchlight, 
round the shrine of Saint Edward and the graves 

25 of the Plantagenets, to the Chapel of Henry the 
Seventh. On the north side of that chapel, in the 
vault of the house of Albemarle, the coffin of 
Addison lies next to the coffin of Montague. Yet 
a few months, and the same mourners passed again 

80 along the same aisle. The same sad anthem was 



248 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

again chanted. The same vault was again opened; 
and the coffin of Craggs was placed close to the 
coffin of Addison. 

Many tributes were paid to the memory of Addi- 
son; but one alone is now remembered. Tickell 5 
bewailed his friend in an elegy which would do 
honor to the greatest name in our literature, and 
which unites the energy and magnificence of Dry- 
den to the tenderness and purity of Cowper. This 
fine poem was prefixed to a superb edition of Addi- ic 
son's works, which was published in 1721, by 
subscription. The names of the subscribers 
proved how widely his fame had been spread. 
That his countrymen should be eager to possess his 
writings, even in a costly form, is not wonderful. 15 
But it is wonderful that, though English literature 
was then little studied on the continent, Spanish 
grandees, Italian prelates, marshals of France, 
should be found in the list. Among the most 
remarkable names are those of the Queen of 20 
Sweden, of Prince Eugene, of the Grand Duke of 
Tuscany, of the Dukes of Parma, Modena, and 
Guastalla, of the Doge of Genoa, of the Regent 
Orleans, and of Cardinal Dubois. We ought to 
add that this edition, though eminently beautiful, 25 
is in some important points defective ; nor, indeed, 
do we yet possess a complete collection of Addi- 
son's writings. 

It is strange that neither his opulent and noble 
widow, nor any of his powerful and attached 30 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 249 

friends, should have thought of placing even a 
simple tablet, inscribed with his name, on the walls 
of the Abbey. It was not till three generations 
had laughed and wept over his pages, that the 
5 omission was, supplied by the public veneration. 
At length, in our own time, his image, skilfully 
graven, appeared "in Poet's Corner. It represents 
liim, as we can conceive him, clad in his dressing- 
gown, and freed from his wig, stepping from his 

10 parlor at Chelsea into his trim little garden, with 
the account of the Everlasting Club, or the Loves 
of Hilpa and Shalum, just finished for the next 
day's Spectator^ in his hand. Such a mark of 
national respect was due to the unsullied states - 

15 man, to the accomplished scholar, to the master 
of pure English eloquence, to the consummate 
painter of life and manners. It was due, above all, 
to the great satirist, who alone knew how to use 
ridicule without abusing it, who, without inflicting 

20 a wound, effected a great social reform, and who 
reconciled wit and virtue, after a long and disas- 
trous separation, during which wit had been led 
astray by profligacy, and virtue by fanaticism. 



NOTES 

Although these notes are critical, they include few questions in regard 
to Macaulay's structure and style. It is deemed that the lutroduction 
aflFords a sufficient starting-point for studies in that direction. Expla- 
nations of names, etc., must be sought in the Glossary. 

MILTON 

This is the first of a long series of essays which Macau- 
lay contributed to the Edinburgh Review. It appeared in 
Aug-ust, 1825, immediately establishing- his fame. In the 
preface to his collected essays he said of it that it "con- 
tained scarcely a paragraph such as his matured judgment 
approved," and that even after revision it remained "over- 
loaded with gaudy and ungraceful ornament." The revi- 
sion did not involve any remodeling, but only the removal 
of some blemishes caused by haste. A few of these changes 
will be noted below. In spite of Macaulay's depreciation, 
sincere and warranted, the essay remains a wonderful 
achievement for a man of twenty-four years. The critical 
tone is youthful, but in grasp of history and in authorita- 
tive judgment on historical matters there is no sign of 
juvenility. 

There are biographies of Milton in the English Men of 
Letters series (by Mark Pattison), in Great Writers (by 
Richard Garnett), in Classical Writers (by Stopford A. 
Brooke), and there is the great six-volume Life bj'- Masson. 
Of Milton's works, Masson's editions, large and small, are 
the best. The Globe edition is the most convenient. 

Page 45: Title. Joannis, etc. All the articles in the ^fZm- 
burgh Review were, and still are, unsigned reviews of books, 
printed speeches, etc, and have prefixed to them the name 
of the book reviewed. The magazine, though now nearly 
one hundred years old, has not changed its form in any 
respect ; the very title-page remains word for word as in 
251 



252 NOTES 

the first number, except that it now bears the imprint of 
London instead of Edinburgh. The so-called reviews, how- 
ever, are often much more than reviews. Macaulay in partic- 
ular would not confine himself within such narrow limits, 
but made the publication of a book a pretext for writing- 
a finished essay on the theme suggested by it. Note in this 
essay the point at which he leaves the book he is review- 
ing and launches into his general theme. When the entire 
essay has been read and outlined, it will be interesting to 
discuss the question how far Mr. J. Cotter Morison is jus- 
tified in classifying it with the historical rather than with 
the critical essays. See Introduction, 6. 

45 : 9. Mr. Skinner, Merchant. Macaulay errs in follow- 
ing the conjectures of Mr. Lemon and others. Cyriack 
Skinner, to whom Milton indited two sonnets, was proba- 
bly not a merchant. The Latin Treatise was copied out by 
one Daniel Skinner, an amanuensis of Milton's, was sent to 
Elzevir, the Arastei'dara printer, but, not being published 
for political reasons, was probably returned to Daniel Skin- 
ner's father, who was a merchant. See Masson's Life of 
Milton, vol. vi., p. 791, or Ency. Brit. xvi. 328. 

46: 20. The book itself. Could we not almost determine 
the date of Macaulay's essay from the internal evidence of 
this paragraph? 

46: 28. Polish and hrigliten . . (/loss and bi'illiancy. One 
example of "overloading with gaudy ornament." Find 
others. 

47:3. Quintilian stare. See Milton's Sonnet XI. There 
are other quotations from Milton's sonnets in this essaj'. 

47: 8. We may apply. The sentence was originally 
written : '*What Denham with great felicity says of Cowley, 
may be applied to him." Why did Macaulay, in revising, 
invert it? 

47: 9. The garb. 

Horace's wit and Virgil's state 

He did not steal, but emulate, 

And when he would like them appear, 

Their garb, but not their clothes, did wear. 

— From Denham's Elegy on Cowley. 



NOTES 253 

47: 19. Some of the. Was it well to make a new para- 
graph here? 

47: 29. Observation. Some editors have changed this to 
observance, but Macaulay wrote observatio?i, and it must stand. 
It is certainly a matter for surprise that he was either 
ig-norant of, or careless about, the distinction between 
these forms that has held pretty well ever since Shaks- 
pere's time. See Century Diet., "observance," syn. The 
very translation which he was reviewing- has always, in 
this connection, either celebration or observance. 

49: 10. His detractors. It is not Macaulay's way to 
speak thus in g-eneral terms without having- something 
very specific in mind. And the specific instances are 
usually given. A little search will show that one is g-iven 
here. With this clue it may be worth while to try to find 
just where it has been intimated that Milton only "in- 
herited what his predecessors created." 

49: 28. Paradoxical . . appear. Show that the phrase 
is pleonastic. 

50: 2. A7i age too late. Paradise Lost, ix. 44. The same 
doubt had been expressed in a tract, " Keason of Church 
Government," written more than twenty years before Par- 
adise Lost. 

50: 12. As civilization advances. In mature life, Macau- 
lay was inclined to discountenance such philosophical 
speculation as totally worthless. Is the theory here ad- 
vanced in regard to poetry tenable? Is there not a fallacy 
in the premise that " the earliest poets are g-enerally the 
best "? Assuming- that there were lesser poets before the 
best, what is likely to have become of their work? Read 
Johnson's Easselas, chapter x., and see how much of this is 
orig-inal with Macaulay, how much is opposed to Johnson, 
and how much is in agreement with him. 

52: 24. I\Hobe . . Aurora. Here again Macaulay has 
in njind specific passages in English poetry. Can you find 
ihem? 

54: 6. Children. "He had a favorite theory, on which 
he often insisted, that children were the only true poets, 
and this because of the vividness of their impressions, . . 
as if the force of the impression were everything, and its 



254: NOTES 

character nothing-. By this rule, wax-work should be finer 
art than the best sculpture in stone." — J. Cotter Morison. 

56: 13. Great talenU. A sly thrust at Wordsworth. 
Consider the respective ag-es of the two men and draw 
your conclusion as to one trait of Macaulay's character. 

56: 19. No poet. Introduction, 13. 

58: 1. About him. Macaulay boasted that if all the 
copies of Paradise Lost were destroyed, he could reproduce 
most of the poem from memory. A comparison of the 
lines here quoted with the orig-inal (iv. 551) will show what 
accuracy might have been expected in the reproduction. 
The lines, as Macaulay first printed them, were even more 
inaccurate. 

58: 27. Put their sickles. Eeaders familiar with the 
Bible will note in these essays a surprisingly large number 
of Biblical echoes. 

59: 30. Burial-places of the memory. One of the most 
striking- and beautiful figures in these essays. A late 
wri^^^er on style, Mr. Walter Raleigh, has made it more 
vivid perhaps, but not more beautiful, when he writes: 
"The mind of man is peopled like some silent city, with 
a sleeping company of reminiscences, associations, impres- 
sions, attitudes, emotions, to be awakened into fierce 
activity at the touch of words." 

60: 9. The miserable failure. Does this last sentence add 
to the beauty of the paragraph? To the force of the argu- 
ment? Which is the more probable — that the instance 
grew out of the argument, or the argument out of the in. 
stance? Dry den, by the way, is said to have had Milton's 
"somewhat contemptuous consent" to try to "tag his 
verses." 

62: 2. 3Ir. Kewbery. A good example of Macaulay's 
love of specific details. Most writers would have omitted 
the name of the inventor. It is also one of the "journal- 
istic" eai'-marks. Mr. Newbery may have been well 
known to the British public in 1825, — it might not be easy, 
even if it were worthwhile, to find out anything about him 
now. The curious reader will find several Newberys in 
ihe Diet, of Nat. Biog., and one of them wrote story-books 
for children, but he died in 1767, and the curious reader is 



NOTES 255 

not certainly wiser. In like manner, in Macaulay's essay 
on Eobert Montg-omery, there are allusions to " Romanis's 
fleecy hosiery, Pack wood's razor straps, and Rowland's 
Kalydor." 

64: 3. Sad Electro's poet. Later in life, Macaulay 
chang-ed his mind about Euripides, liking- him then better 
than Sophocles. 

65 : 18. Rags of a chimney-sweeper. This fig-ure had been 
used by Macaulay in his essay on Petrarch, published the 
year before, in KnighVs Quarterly 3Iagazine. Comparing- Pe- 
trarch's worst poems with his best, he says: " They differ 
from them as a May-day procession of chimney-sweepers 
differs from the Field of Cloth of Gold. They have the 
g-audiness but not the wealth." It is interesting- to note 
that there is an allusion to the Field of Cloth of Gold also in 
the present essay. 

66 : 10. Dorique delicacy. The Doric dialect was consid- 
ered. less pure and eleg-ant thanthe Attic, and " Doric dia- 
lect " is to-day almost equivalent to "slang-." However, 
Mr. Stedman, thinking- of Theocritus, calls the Tenny- 
sonian idyllic ejects Dorian {Victorian Poets., p. 227). And 
the Doric order of architecture combined "great solidity 
with extreme delicacy and artistic taste." 

69:11. Ball of St. Peter'' s. Inferno, xxxi. 5\. Literally, 
the pine-cone of St. Peter's. "This pine-cone, of bronze, 
was set orig-inally upon the summit of the Mausoleum of 
Hadrian. . . . It was, in the sixth century, taken down 
and carried off to adorn a fountain ... in front of the 
old basilica of Saint Peter."— C. E. Norton: Travel a?id Study 
in Italy. The cone is now in the gardens of the Vatican. It 
is eleven feet high — which would make the giant 
seventy. 

69 : 18. Mr. Cary^s translation. We have many transla- 
tions now, notably Longfellow's, but Mr. Cary's (1805-14) 
has held its own remarkably well. 

77: 10. Fee-fawfum. For -example, Tasso's J'erusalem 
Delivered, Iv. 4-8 ; Klopstock's Jlessias, ii. 

79: 10. Modern beggars for fame. This time the thrust 
is at Byron. Compare the allusion to the " sneer of 
Harold," on p. 62. 



256 NOTES 

80: 16. A statesman and a lover. Milton was, we admit, 
a statesman, and Dante was a lover, but we are reluctant 
to admit much more. 

80: 28. Style of a bellman. A somewhat vulg-ar com- 
parison. Macaulay seems to have liked it — compare the 
Introduction, 7. 

81:12. Neither hlindness. For the style, see .Soma?iS viii. 
38, 39. It is interesting- to compare the form in which this 
sentiment reappears in the History of England, written fif- 
teen or more years later: "A mig-htier poet, tried at once 
by pain, dang-er, poverty, obloquy, and blindness, medi- 
tated, undisturbed by the obscene tumult which rag-ed all 
around him, a song- so sublime and so holy that it would 
not have misbecome the lips of those ethereal Virtues 
whom he saw, with that inner eye which no calamity 
could darken, flinging- down on the jasper pavement their 
crowns of quotation in amaranth and gold." (Chap, iii.) 

82: 9. Juice of summer fruits. Macaulay rarely fails to 
give a curiouslv utilitarian twist to his finest descriptions 
Of nature. Note, too, several sentences below, how his 
love of antithesis pursues him even into his appreciation 
of scenery. In the next essay, as he follows Addison on 
his, travels, among the things of note are "verdure under 
the winter solstice," "the smallest independent state in 
Europe," bad roads, rich plains, a healthy peasantry, 
simple manners and institutions. Clearly the modern 
nature worship had taken no strong hold upon him. Con- 
sider his life-interests and -environment. See Introduc- 
tion, 16, 18; and compare Emerson's statement: "The 
brilliant Macaulay, who expresses the tone of the English 
governing classes of the day, explicitly teaches that good 
means good to eat, good to wear, material commodity." 

84: 13. Unwonted fear. The original reads "strange 
and unwonted fear." Why was " strange " expunged? 

84: 23. Lion. La Fontaine's Fables, iii. 10; uEsop, 63 
(219). 

87: 2. The present year. In 182.5 the Catholic Associa- 
tion agitated for emancipation, and Canning succeeded in 
passing through the House a bill for the relief of the Cath- 
olics. For Macaulay's attitude in the matter, if it cannot 



NOTES 257 

be g-athei'ed from the pag-es that follow here, see Tre- 
velyan's Life, i. 141. What double purpose does this dig-res- 
sion upon the Revolution of 1688 serve? And what has it 
all to do with Milton? 

87: 17. Their labor. It should be an easy matter to g-uess 
the source of thi3 quotation. That done, it is scarcely 
worth while to look it up further. 

88 : 4. To palliate. The subtle sarcasm of this must 
not be overlooked. The entire parag-raph may require 
long- and close study before it yields its full meaning-. The 
most important thing-, of course, is its g-eneral drift and its 
bearing- on the larg-er theme of the principles behind the 
Eng-lish Revolution. This should be fairly clear at one 
reading-. But this will be much reinforced by a knowledge 
of the historical details used as illustrations. Macaulay 
passes so rapidly, in his analogies and illustrations, from 
one thing- to another, from the Rebellion to the Revolu- 
tion, and from Ireland at the time of the Revolution to the 
Catholic countries after the restoration of the Bourbons in 
the present century, that one must have some g-i'asp of 
g-eneral history to follow him. Take note that after the 
downfall of Napoleon, the Boui'bon kings wei-e reestab- 
lishing themselves. With the terrible lesson of the French 
Revolution behind them, they changed their phrase of 
" divine right " into something milder, as "legitimacy." 
Promising, and even granting, popular constitutions, they 
repeatedly broke their pledges. Ferdinand IV. of Naples 
(Ferdinand I. of the Two Sicilies) did thus ; Ferdinand VII. 
of Spain did thus ; and out of the despotism of the latter 
grew the revolt of the South American possessions. Now, 
these peoples were suffering for revolting against Catholic 
kings ; the Irish, two centuries ago, had suffered for adher- 
ing to a Catholic king, and their descendants are suffering 
still. Yet, in the eyes of a certain class of people, it is all 
one. Macaulay is really arraigning all who would justify 
abuses, whether the abuses take the form of imperial des- 
potism or religious persecution. If the arraignment is a 
little hot-headed, we remember that Macaulay was young, 
and that he was writing for a Whig journal. 

88: SI. Ferdinand^ the Catholic. It is pretty clear that 



258 NOTES 

Macaulay means, not Ferdinand V., who is commonly sur- 
named " The Catholic," but Ferdinand VII. "Frederic 
the Protestant " seems to be drag-ged in chiefly to fill out 
the antithesis, though Frederick William III. of Prussia 
was also intolerant of liberal ideas and neglected to set up 
the constitutional system of government which he had 
promised. ^ 

94: 24. Hume . . address. This is precisely the 
charge sometimes brought against Macaulay. 

95: 16. Unmerited fate of Strafford. A discussion of 
this and of other events in the time of Charles I. mav 
be found in Macaulay's essay on Hallam's Constitutional 
History. 

95 : 25. Shouting for King Jesus. There is no intentional 
irreverence here, but there is certainly a breach of good 
taste. The offence lies not so much in what is said as in 
the way in which it is said. 

103: 28. ^nece magni dextra. -SJneas, compelled to slay 
the brave j^outh, Lausus (Vergil, ^n. x. 830), tries to con- 
sole the dying youth, saying: " This at least, ill-starred as 
you are, shall solace the sadness of your death : it is great 
-.Eneas's hand that brings you low." The aptness of the 
comparison is evident, and affords a good illustration of 
Macaulay's analog'ic faculty (Introduction, 8). 

106: 19. Then came those days. Whatever we may think 
of this passage as history, which should be above all dis- 
passionate, we cannot withhold our admiration for it as 
literature. Rhetoric it ma}^ be, but it is rhetoric touched 
and sublimed by an almost Hebraic fqrvor. On the other 
hand, the fourth paragraph following has in it a decided 
ring of insincerity, so that what is meant to be eloquence 
is only cheap grandiloquence. 

108: 7. Calves^ heads . . oak-hranches. The Calves' 
Head Club was instituted in ridicule of Charles I. At its 
dinners a dish of calves' heads represented the king and 
his friends. Oak-branches were worn by Royalists on the 
birthday of Charles II. in memory of the time when, after 
the battle of Worcester, he concealed himself in an oak 
at Boscobel. See Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, 
xiii, 84. 



NOTES 259 

109: 12. EccoU fonte. 
" See here the stream of laughter, see the spring-,' 
Quoth they, "of danger and of deadly pain, 
Here fond desire must by fair governing 
Be ruled, our lust bridled with wisdom's rein." 
— Tasso: Jerusalem Delivered^ iv, 57 (Fairfax's translation.) 

1 1 6 : 34. He was not a Puritan. Compare Masson's Life, 
vi. 840. 

120: 9. Called upon Cromwell. Sonnet xvi. 

121: 19. Nitorin adversum. Apollo's speech, telling how 
he must drive the chariot Df the sun against the eastward 
movement of the universe: " Against this I must contend; 
nor does the force which overcomes all else overcome me, 
but I am borne in an opposite direction to the wheeling 
world." Ovid, Metam. ii. 72. 

123: 26. Boswellism. In the first essay on William Pitt, 
this becomes ^^Lues Boswelliana, or disease of admiration." 
In the essay on Hastings, it appears as '■'■Furor Biographicus.''^ 

124: 6. Of these was Milton. If Milton suffered severely 
at the hands of Dr. Johnson in the eighteenth century, he 
has had no lack of valiant champions in the nineteenth. 
Conspicuous among them, besides Macaulay, were Thomas 
de Quincey and Walter Savage Landor. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 

Of the thirty-six essays contributed by Macaulay to the 
Edinburgh Review., this was the thirty-fourth. It appeared in 
July, 1843, and represents him at the maturity of his powers. 
It cannot quite rank, however, with such essays as those on 
Clive and Hastings, because the author is not so much at 
home In criticism as in history. Let the reader, in compar- 
ing it with the essay on Milton, note all the evidences he 
can find of the growth of Macaulay' s mind and art. It will 
be profitable to read in connection with it the essays upon 
Addison by Johnson {Lives of the Poets) and Thackeray 
(English Humorists) Mr. Courthope's Life of Addison, in 
the English Men of Letters series, should be read, if possi- 
ble, if only to correct some of the mistakes or exaggerations 



260 NOTES 

of Macaulay's essay. Perhaps, too, in order to avoid car- 
rying away from the prolonged study of one man a false 
estimate of his importance, it will be well to keep in mind 
the words written by a late critic, Mr. Gosse, in his History 
of Eighteenth Century Literature: "With some modification, 
what has been said of Addison may be repeated of Steele, 
whose fame has been steadily growing w^hile the exagger- 
ated reputation of Addison has been declining." "The 
time has probably gone by when either Addison or Steele 
could be placed at the summit of the literary life of their 
time. Swift and Pope, each in his own way, distinctly sur- 
passed them." 

127 : 24. Abject idolatry. This is still another reference 
to what Macaulay elsewhere calls Boswellism, or disease of 
admiration. How near he comes to falling himself a victim 
to it in the present essay, the reader must not fail to judge. 

133: 29. His knowledge of Greek. Note just what is said, 
and do not get the idea that Addison knew no Greek. 
Macaulay has a way of making his sentences seem to say 
more than is in their words. ♦• 

136:10. Evidences of Christianity. The essay is entitled 
"Of the Christian Religion." Gibbon had long before 
brought the same charge of superficiality against the essay. 

136: 21, Moved the senate to admit. This is either one 
of Macaulay's exaggerations, or else "moved the senate" 
must be understood in a strictly parliamentary sense. 
What Addison wrote ("Of the Christian Religion," i. 7) is 
this: " Tertullian . . . tells . . . that the Emperor 
Tiberius, having received an account out of Palestine in 
Syria of the Divine Person who had appeared in that coun- 
try, paid him a particular regard, and threatened to punish 
anyhow should accuse the Christians; nay, that the em- 
peror would have adopted him among the deities whom they 
worshipped, had not the senate refused to come into his 
proposal." 

137: 12. Confounded an aphorism. This is very boldly 
borrowed, without acknowledgment, from the account of 
Blackmore in Johnson's Lives. Macaulay is not always fair 
to Johnson. As to the second charge against Blackmore, if 
Macaulay found four false quantities on one page (he seems 



NOTES 261 

to refer to the pronunciation of Latin proper names in an Eng- 
lish poem, and not to Latin verses) he would probably con- 
sider that to be a sufficient basis for making the statement. 

138:28. Exsurgit. Again Macaulay seems to be quoting 
from memory, for Addison wrote ossurgit, following Vergil, 
Georgics 3, 355. The translation of the lines is : " Now into 
mid-ranks strides the lofty leader of the Pygmies, of awful 
majesty and venerable port, overtopping all the rest with 
his gigantic bulk, and towering to half an ell." 

142:18. After his bees. The figure was suggested by the 
subject-matter of a portion of the fourth Georgic— the hiv- 
ing and care of bees. It is made more appropriate too by 
the familiar legend, told of many poets and particularly of 
Pindar, that bees swarmed upon their lips in infancy, por- 
tending the sweetness of their future songs. 

149: 12. The accomplished men. See Boswell's Johnson. 

149: 23. Johnson will have it. In his life of Addison. It 
is interesting to see how Macaulay delights in setting his 
opinion against the great Doctor's. In his biographical 
essay upon him, however, he is generous enough, though, as 
Mr. Morison says, his "appreciation is inadequate." 

150: 16. No poem . . in dead language. Macaulay, 
in his various essays, repeats freely his ideas and illustra- 
tions. Turn to his essay on Frederic the Great, and in the 
passage beginning at about the eleventh paragraph, will be 
found this same discussion, together with the account of 
Frederic the Great's accomplishments in French, and an 
allusion to " Newdigate and Seatonian poetry." It is a 
good example of the working of the psychologic law of asso- 
ciation. And any one familiar with the essays can turn to 
a dozen such examples. 

151: 22. Ne croyez. "Do not think, however, that I 
mean by this to condemn the Latin verses of one of your 
illustrious scholars which you have sent me. I find them 
excellent, worthy indeed of Vida or Sannazaro, though not 
of Horace and Vergil." 

152: 10. Quid numeris. "Why, O Muse, dost thou bid 
me, a Frank, born far this side of the Alps, again to stam- 
mer in Latin verse ? " 

153: 7. An event. This union of France and Spain left 



262 NOTES 

the othei' countries of Europe at a great disadvantage, and 
led to the Grand Alliance against France and Spain, and 
the long War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). 

154: 29. Moi'C ivonder than pleaswx. Not, perhaps, until 
Ruskin's Stones of Venice. (1851-53) was Gothic architecture 
fully appreciated by the English. 

155: 17. Soliloquy. For the famous soliloquy in Ad- 
dison's Tragedy of Cato, see Act V., Sc. I. 

158: 8. Tory fox-hunter. Addison's Free?ioZder, No. 22. 

158: 15. Tomh of Misenua. ^^neid Yl., 233.— Circe. Mn. 
VII., 10. 

162: 7. He became tutor. Probably incorrect. See Glos- 
sary, Somerset. 

164: 13. The position of Mr. Canning. That is, the posi- 
tion of a moderate Tory, favoring the measures and reforms 
advocated by the Whigs. 

167 : 12. Famous similitude. Containing the famous line, 
"Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm." 

169: 2. Life-guardsman. Members of the Life Guards 
must be six feet tall. As to Shaw, cf. note on Mr. New- 
BERY, 62: 2. 

173:19. Spectre Huntsman. Macaulay may be thinking 
of Byron's verse, " The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line." 
{Don Juan, iii., 106). " Ravenna's immemorial wood," says 
Bj^ron, "Boccaccio's lore and Dryden's lay made haunted 
ground to me." Addison should have known the story from 
Boccaccio's tale. Dryden's versification of it, Theodore and 
Honoria, was only published in 1700, while Addison was 
abroad, and it is not likely he had read it befoi'e visiting 
Ravenna, though he might well havw read it before writing 
up his travels. However, Macaulay fails to consider that 
not all memories respond to suggestions so readily as his 
own. Atone place in his journal, for instance, he tells how 
he visited Louis the Fourteenth's bedroom, and — " I thought 
of all St. Simon's anecdotes about that room and bed." 

173: 25. Greatest lyric poet. This is extravagant praise. 

177: 4. The Censorship of the Press. This practically 
ceased in 1679, when the statute for the regulation of 
printing, which was passed just after the Restoration, 
expired. 



NOTES 263 

178:12.' In Grub street. Does this mean that Walpole 
and Pulteney lived in Grub street? 

179: 27. Popularity . . timidity. One of Macaulay's 
paradoxes. 

181: 4. He had one hahit. "He [Macaulay] too fre- 
quently resorts to vulgar gaudiness. For example, there is 
in one place a certain description of an alleged practice of 
Addison's. Swift had said of Esther Johnson that 'whether 
from easiness in general, or from her indifference to persons, 
or from her despair of mending them, or from the same 
practice which she most liked in Mr. Addison, I cannot 
determine; but when she saw any of the company very 
warm in a wrong opinion, she was more inclined to confirm 
them in it than to oppose them. It prevented noise, she 
said, and saved time.' Let us behold what a picture Macau- 
lay draws on the strength of this passage. ' If his first 
attempts to set a presuming dunce right were ill-received,' 
Macaulay says of Addison, ' he changed his tone, " assented 
with civil leer," and lured the flattered coxcomb deeper and 
deeper into absurdity.' To compare this transformation of 
the simplicity of the original into the grotesque heat and 
overcharged violence of the copy, is to see the homely 
maiden of a country village transformed into the painted 
flaunter of the city." — John Morlet. Macaulay's quota- 
tion, " assented with civil leer," is from Pope's well-known 
line: 

" Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer." 

181: 12. Criticisms . . dialogue. TaHer, 163; Spectator, 
568. 

184: 12. Steele. "^The character of Steele, with his 
chivalry and his derelictions, his high ideal and his broken 
resolves, has been a favorite one with recent biographers, 
who prefer his rough address to the excessive and meticu- 
lous civility of Addison. It is permissible to love them 
both, and to see in each the complement of the other. It is 
proved that writers like Macaulaj^ and even Thackeray have 
overcharged the picture of Steele's delinquencies, and have 
exaggerated the amount of Addison's patronage of his 
friend. But nothing can explain away Steele's carelessness 
in money matters or his inconsistency in questions of moral 



264 NOTES 

detail. He was very quick, warm-hearted and impulsive, 
while Addison had the advantage of a cold and phlegmatic 
constitution. Against the many eulogists of the younger 
man we ipay place Leigh Hunt's sentence : ' I prefer open- 
hearted Steele with all his faults to Addison with all his 
essays.'" — Gosse: History of Eighteenth Century Literature 
(1889) . See also Aitken's Life of Steele, II. , 345 and else where. 

185:14. Fiovoked Addison. Landor's " Imaginary Con- 
versation between Steele and Addison " will be interesting 
reading in this connection. 

186: 10. The real history. See Introduction, 12. 

191: 23. By mere accident. As a matter of fact, critics 
are pretty well agreed that Steele led ttie way everywhere, 
though in certain respects Addison often outshone him. 
In the words of Mr. Aitken, Steele's biographer, "the 
world owes Addison to Steele." 

192: 3. Half German jargon. Carlyle had for some 
years, like Coleridge before him, been acting as a medium 
between German philosophy and literature and English. 
Of course Macaulay is ridiculing Carlyle' s uncouth style. 
Landor, another stickler for pure English, said upon the 
appearance of Carlyle' s Frederick that he was convinced he 
(Landor) wrote two dead languages— Latin and English. 

196: 18. Revenge . . wreaked. Who Bettesworth 
and De Pompignan were is not important. Can it be deter- 
mined from the text who "wreaked revenge" upon them? 

200: 1. White staff. Official badge of the Lord High 
Treasurer. 

200: 15. We calmly review. Calmly, perhaps, but not 
impartially. Macaulay's Whig prejudices are very apparent. 

201: 25. Lo^t his fortune. It is very probable, however, 
that Addison was still what might be called " independently 
rich." 

207 : 19. TJie following papers. Nos. 36, 329, 69, 317, 159, 
343, 517. 

208 : 16. The stamp tax. A Tory measure of 1712 virtu- 
ally aimed at the freedom of the press. 

21 0: 4. Easy solution. Macaulay's essays are full of 
these easy solutions. They are usually mere guesses, but it 
must be admitted that they are usually sensible ones. 



NOTES 265 

211.' 11. From the city. That is, from the mercantile 
portion of the city— the original city of London. 

213: 30. The French model. This refers to dramas of 
the so-called Classical school, which adhered closely to 
certain conventional rules— the three "unities," for in- 
stance, of time, place and action. The Shaksperean drama 
is constructed with far greater freedom. 

215 : 1. But among. Why is this long paragraph allowed 
to stand as a unit, when it could easily be subdivided ? And 
why are some short paragraphs (the ninth preceding, for 
example) allowed to stand, when they could easily be com- 
bined with the others ? 

215: 28. Malice. Toward whom ? 

221 : 27. The Swift of 1708. 1708 was the date of one of 
Swift's best poems, Baucis and Philemon, and of the attack 
upon astrology in the pamphlet against Partridge, the alma- 
nac-maker, which Macaulay has already mentioned. In 1738, 
the year of his last published writing (long after the death 
of Addison, be it noted), he was an old man on the verge of 
insanity. 

222:27. Iliad. VI., 226. Diomedes speaks to Glaucus : 
" So let us shun each other's spears, even among the throng; 
Trojans are there in multitudes and famous allies for me to 
slay, whoe'er it be that God vouchsafeth me, and my feet 
overtake ; and for thee are there Achaians in multitude, to 
slay whome'er thou canst."— Leaf's translation. 

232: 17. All stiletto and mask. For Macaulay' s portrait 
of Pope, as of Steele, many allowances must be made. 

233: 26. Cannot . . certainty. See Courthope's 
Addison, chapter vii. 

234: 16. Energetic lines. The " Epistle to Dr. Arbuth- 
not" (Prologue to the Satires), lines 193-214. 

236 : 22. Hollajid House. Macaulay has celebrated this 
mansion of social fame in one of his most ambitious periods 
— the concluding paragraph of the essay on Lord Holland, a 
strange compound of artificiality of form and undeniable 
sincerity of feeling. 

237: 19. Consolatory verses. Not, of course, because he 
was to visit Ireland for the last time, but because he had to 
visit Ireland at all. 



266 NOTES 

244 : 11. Little Dicky was the nickname. In the article as 
originally printed in the Edinhuryh Review this sentence 
stands : "Little Dicky was evidently the nickname of some 
comic actor who played the usurer Gomez," etc. Macaulay, 
having discovered later that his guess was entirely right, 
inserted the name of the actor into the revised essay. But 
it may be noticed that, in the face of this positive informa- 
tion, his preceding argument and " confident affirmation," 
which he allowed to remain as written, now fall a little flat. 

247: 10. Shepherd, whose crook. It is a little hard to 
forgive Macaulay for yielding so often to the temptation to 
paraphrase the most beautiful and most exalted passages in 
literature. The echoes from Comus in his essay on Milton 
will be remembered. And in his essay on Boswell's Life of 
Johnson he has ventured thus to lay hands on one of the 
sublimest utterances in Dante— Cacciaguida's prophecy of 
Dante's banishment: 

" Thou Shalt nave proof how savoreth of salt 
The bread of others, and how hard a road 
The going down and up another's stairs." 

To have such pure poetry as this, which remains poetry 
still in Longfellow's perfect translation, turned into mere 
rhetoric, into "that bread which is the bitterest of all food, 
those stairs which are the most toilsome of all paths," jars 
cruelly upon the sensibilities of all to whom the original has 
become familiar and sacred. 

248 : 24. We ought to add. Here the journalist and re- 
viewer most inopportunely intrudes upon the eulogist. As 
to the eulogy itself, the catalogue of dignitaries in the pre- 
ceding sentence has no such impressiveness for the demo- 
cratic reader as it may have had for English readers of fifty 
years ago. In fact it is a little ridiculous, and throws a 
curious light either on Macaulay's estimate of his readers, 
or, what is equally probable, upon the limitations of his own 
nature. To see that nature at its best we must turn back 
to the revelation of a worthier feeling in the touching 
description of Addison's dedication of his works to his friend 
Ctaggs. 



GLOSSARY 

For the principle followed in compiling this Glossary, and on the use of 
reference boolis generallj', see Preface. 



Act. At Oxford, the occasion of the 
conferring of degrees, at which 
formerly miracle and mystery 
plays were enacted. After 1669 
the Act was performed in the 
Sheldonian Theater, and London 
companies frequently went down 
to give performances. 213:15. 

Act of Settlement. The agree- 
ment by which the Hanoverians 
and not the Stuarts (whom Louis 
XIV. favored) were to succeed 
Queen Anne. 165 :6. 

Ag'barus or Ab'garus. Ruler of 
Edessa in Mesopotamia. Euse- 
bius supposed him to have been 
the author of a letter written to 
Christ, found in the church at 
Edessa. The letter is believed by 
Gibbon and others to be spurious. 
136:22. 

Am'adis of Gaul. The hero of a 
famous mediaeval romance. Also 
the name of the romance. 70:30. 

Aminta. An Italian pastoral drama 
by Tasso, 1573. 65:4. 

Anathema Marana'tha. Com- 
monly interpreted as an intense 
form of anathema, i.e., a thing ac- 
cursed. Seel. Cor., xvi., 22. 107:3. 

Arima'nes (or Ahr'iman). See Oro- 
MASDES. 84:1. 

Ar'tegal, Sir. The impersonation of 
Justice in the fifth book of Spen- 
ser's -f'aiV?/ Queen. 113:19. 

Athalie'. A tragedy by the French 
dramatist Racine. 214:1. 



Balisar'da. In Ariosto's Orlando 
Furioso, the enchanted sword of 
Orlando (cp. Arthur's Excalibur), 
which finally falls into the hands 
of Rogero. In Rogero's fight with 
Bradamante, it is exchanged for 
another sword (xlv., 68). 125: 
18. 

Bena'cus. The largest lake of 
Northern Italy and noted for 
storms. It is now called Garda. 
Vergil (Georgics 2, 160) tells of 
" Benacua, swelling with billows 
and boisterous turmoil, like a 
sea." 154:30. 

Bentley, Richard. A noted English 
classical scholar. His " Disserta- 
tion on the Epistles of Phalaris" 
(1697, 1699), which Person, anotlier 
noted scholar, called "the immor- 
tal dissertation," was written to 
prove the spuriousness of those 
epistles. 137:22. 

Biographia Britannica. Published 
1747-66. Long a standard work; 
superseded of course now, espe- 
cially by the Dictionary of National 
Biography. 129:7. 

Blenheim. In Bavaria. The scene 
of the great defeat of the French 
(1704) by the allies under Marl- 
borough and Prince Eugene. 164: 
29. 

Book of Gold. The name given to 
the list of Genoese nobles and citi- 
zens of property which was made 
at the time Andrea Doria deliv- 



a67 



268 



GLOSSARY 



ered Genoa from French domina- 
tion (1528). 154:22. 

Boyle, Charles. He attempted, 
with the help of others, to defend 
the genuineness of the " Epistles 
of Phalaris" against the famous 
scholar Bentley. Swift's Battle 
of the Books is founded on the 
incident. See Macaulay's sketch of 
Atterbury in the Ency. Brit. 
137 :5. 

Bradaman'te. In Ariosto's Orlando 
Furioso, a woman of great prow- 
ess, finally overcome by Rogero, 
whom she marries. 125 :16. 

Brunei, Sir Marc Isambard. A civil 
engineer who in 1806 completed 
machinery for making ships' 
blocks. 140:26. 

Button's. A London coflfee-house, 
probably established by an old 
servant of Addison's. 128:15. 

Captain General. See Mablbor- 
OUQH. 175:21. 

Catharine of Braganza. The In- 
fanta of Portugal. Married Charles 
II. of England in 1662. 129 :23. 

Cat'inat, Nicholas. Commander of 
the French army in Northern 
Italy in the War of the Spanish 
Succession. 159:30. 

Charter House (a corruption of 
Chartreuse). Originally a Carthu- 
sian monastery in London; later 
an endowed hospital and school 
for boys. Pictured bj' Thackeray, 
in The Neiocomes, under the name 
of Grey Friars. 130 :20. 

Child's. A coffee-house, frequented 
by churchmen. 204:17. 

Cinna. A tragedy by the French 
dramatist Corneille. 214 :2. 

Clarendon, Earl of (Edward Hyde). 
The chief adviser of Charles I. dur- 
ing the Civil War. The great his- 
tory of the Rebellion which he left 
was not published till 1704. 85:11. 



Cock Lane Ghost. See Boswell'a 
Johnson, June 25, 1763. 136:18. 

Collier, Jeremy. An English clergy- 
man. He attacked the contem- 
porary theater in his Immorality 
and I'rofaneness of the English 
-S'tofire, 1698. 197:3. 

Conduct of the Allies. A famous 
Tory pamphlet written by Swift, 
1711. 177:13. 

Congreve, 126:29; Wycherley, 
197:5; Etherege, 197:4; Van- 
brugh, 197:16. For the Restora- 
tion drama and dramatists, see 
Macaulay's essay on Leigh Hunt's 
edition of the dramatists; also 
his History, Chapters II. and III. 

Corporation. In English politics, 
a body of men governing a town 
and selecting its member of Par- 
liament. 202:4. 

Defensio PopuH. Properly Pi-o 
Populo Anglicano Defensio. Mil- 
ton's most famous Latin work, 
1651. See Salmasius. 48:7. 

demy', or demi. At Magdalen 
College, Oxford, a student upon 
a scholarship, who will succeed to 
the next vacant fellowship. 132:19. 

Dominic, Saint. The founder of the 
Dominican order of monks. A 
religious zealot, and friend of De 
Montfort the elder in the crusade 
against the Albigenses, 1208. 
114:5. 

Don Ju'an. In the Spanish and 
Italian plays on this theme, Don 
Juan jeeringly invites the statue 
or the ghost of the man he had 
killed to supper. It comes and 
drags him to hell. 76:19. 

Duenna, The. One of Sheridan's 
comedies. 244:5. 

Dunstan, Saint. Archbishop of 
Canterbury in the tenth century. 
Often described as a mystic. One 
legend relates that he once seized 



GLOSSARY 



269 



the devil by the nose with a pair 
of red-Lot tongs. 114. 5. 

Elizabethan age In literature, 
the term commonly includes the 
reigns of both Elizabeth and James 
I. 127:4. 

Erasmus. A famous Dutch theolog- 
ical schcar . His works, after the 
fashion of the time (1500), were 
written in Latin. 151:10. 

Escobar' y Mendo'za, Antonio. 
A Spanish Jesuit who taught that 
purity of intention may justify 
even criminal acts. 114:6. 

Etherege. See Congbeve. 197:4, 

Eugene, Prince. The Austrian gen- 
eral in the War of the Spanish 
Succession. 205 :22. 

Faithful Shepherdess. A pastoral 
drama by John Fletcher, c. 1609. 
65 :2. 

Faustina. The profligate wife of 
the Roman emperor, Marcus 
Aurelius. 172:19. 

Fleetwood, Charles. An English 
Parliamentary general, son-in- 
law of Cromwell. He died in ob- 
scurity long after the Restoration. 
112:21. 

Fracasto'rlus. The Latin form of 
Fracastorio. An Italian physician 
of the 16th century, who wrote 
Latin poems on pathological sub- 
jects. 151:10. 

Frances ca da Rimini. Made im- 
mortal in the most famous Canto 
(Inf. v.) of Dante's Divine Comedy. 
173:21. 

Freeholder. A political paper pub- 
lished by Addison, December, 1715 
to June, 1716. 158:8. 

Gallio. See Acts xviii., 12-17. 114:18. 

Gazetteer. The editor of the state 
newspaper, the Gazette, estab- 
lished by Charles II. 189:15. 



Ger'ano-Pygmasoma'chia, or Pyg- 

mseo-Geranomachia. (Battle of the 
By amies and Cranes. ) A Latin poem 
by Addison. 152:15. 

Godolphin, Earl of. Lord High 
Treasurer during the early part of 
Anne's reign. As a financier, 
he raised the funds to support 
Marlborough in his prosecution 
of the war on the continent. 
163:8. 

Grand Alliance. The alliance 
formed in 1701 between the Holy 
Roman Empire, England, and the 
Netherlands against France and 
Spain. 160:5. 

Grecian, The. A London coffee- 
house of the eighteenth century. 
The Learned Club met there. 
189:27. 

Guardian. A periodical published 
by Steele and Addison, 1713. 153:3. 

Gwynn, Nell. An English actress, 
and mistress of Charles II. 
236:24. 

Halifax. See Montague. 160:20. 

Hampton Court. A royal palace 
on the Thames. 127:3 

Harley, Edward. An English Tory 
statesman and High Churchman. 
Before 1690 he had been a Whig. 
175:16. 

Holland House. See Note on, 
236:22. 

Hough, John. Bishop of Worces- 
ter. Elected president of Magda- 
len College, 1687. 132:6. 

Hume, Joseph. An English politi- 
cian and Member of Parliament 
from 1812-55. He was noted for 
his watchfulness against abuses 
in public expenditure. 85:11. 

Inns of Court. The name of four 
legal societies of London, and of 
the premises which they occupy— 
the Inner Temple, the Middle 



270 



GLOSSARY 



Temple, Lincoln's Inn, and Qray's 
Inn. 211;8. 
Ii'eland, William Henry. A writer 
of plays which he pretended to 
have discovered, and attributed to 
Shakspere. Vortigern and Row- 
ena was played at Drury Lane, 
1796, and its complete failure re- 
sulted in exposure. 136:19. 

Jack Pudding. A clown in English 
folk-lore. 194:13. 

Jonathan's and Garraway's. Lon- 
don coffee-houses frequented by 
merchants and stock-jobbers. 
The promoters of the South Sea 
Bubble met at Garraway's. 21 1 : 12 

Kit-Cat Club. A club of Whig 
politicians and wits. 147:5. 

Lapu'tan flapper. See *GuUiver's 
Travels, iii. 2. 126:16. 

Machi'naB Gesticulan'tes. (Puppet 
Shoiv.) A Latin poem by Addison. 
152:14. 

Maleborge. (Evil I*its.) Dante, 

'' /u/erno, cantos 18-30. 69:23. 

Manchestei', Earl of. Ambassador 
to France just before the War of 
the Spanish Succession. 146:29. 

Marcet,Mrs. Jane. Sbe published in 
1816 Conversation!, on Political Econ- 
omy, a much-praised book in its 
time. 51:11. 

Marlborough, Duke of (John 
Churchill). One of the most fa- 
mous of England's great com- 
manders. He was the leading 
spirit of the Grand Alliance. 
163:8. 

Marli. Marly-le-Koy, a village ten 
miles from Paris, noted for a 
chateau of Louis XIV. 199 :20. 

Montague, or Montagu, Charles, 
Earl of Halifax (1661-1715). See 
Essay on Addison, pp. 139, 143. 
51:12. 



Montfort, Simon de. Two of the 
name, father and son, were com- 
manders in the 13th century. The 
son. In a struggle with Henry III., 
defeated and captured him, and 
virtuallj' originated the House of 
Commons. 114:5. 

Mourad Bey. Commander of the 
Mamelukes at their defeat by Na- 
poleon in the Battle of the Pyra- 
mids. 169:7. 

Nevv'digatc prize. An annual prize 
for English verse, founded at Ox- 
forc by Sir Koger Newdigate. 
139.14 

Newmnrket Heath, in Cambridge- 
shire. Annual horse-races have 
been held there since the time of 
James I. 165:14. 

October Club. A club of extreme 
Tories, named for its celebrated 
October ale. 211:27. 

Oromas'des (or Ormuzd, Ormazd, 
Ahura Mazda). The Wise or 
Good Spirit in the Zoroastrian 
mythology, who will ultimately 
triumph over Ahriman, the Evil 
One. 83:30. 

Pastor Fido. An Italian pastoral 
drama by Guarini, c. 1583. 65 :4. 

peripetia. A Greek technical 
term, signifying a sudden change 
or reverse of fortune, on which the 
plot of a tragedy turns; the de- 
nouement. 216:20, 

Prior, Matthew. An English poet. 
After the death of Anne and the 
rise of the Whig ministry, he was 
imprisoned under suspicion of 
high treason (1715-17). 126:30. 

Ravenna, Wood of. The Pineta or 
pine forest on the shore near Ra- 
venna. See Dante, Ping, xxviii, 
20. 173:18. 



GLOSSARY 



271 



Rich, Henry, Earl of Holland, 
from whom Holland House took 
its name. 240:18. 

Sachev erell, Henrj-. An English 
High Church clergyman and vio- 
lent lOry. He was impeached for 
preacning against the Whig min- 
istry. The trial grew into a party 
struggle, which resulted In the 
overtnrow of the Whigs iii 1710. 
175:27. 

St. James's Coffee-House. The 
resort of politicians. 204:18. 

Salma'sius.Claudius. The Latinized 
name of a French scholar whose 
book in defense of the policy of 
Charles I. called forth Milton's 
I^ro Popul/J Befensio. 102 :24. 

Santa Cro'ce, Church of. In Flor- 
ence. Michelangelo, Galileo, and 
others are bu?ied there. 173:18. 

Satirist . . Age. Sensational jour- 
nals of Macaulay's time, 232:8. 

Saul. A tragedy by the Italian poet 
Alfleri. 214:1. 

Savoy, Duke of. See Victor Ama- 
DEUS. 160:1. 

Seatonlan prize. An annual prize 
for sacred poetry ,founded at Cam- 
bridge by the will (1741) of Thos. 
Seaton, hymn writer. 139:24. 

Shrewsbury, Duke of (Charles Tal- 
bot). One of the noblemen who 
invited the Prince of Orange to 
England in 1688. On the death of 
Anne in 1714 he became Lord High 
Treasurer. 88:11. 

Silius Ital'icus. A Roman writer 
of a dull heroic poem in seventeen 
books. 135:12. 

Smalrirtge, George. Bishop of 
Bristol in the time of Queen Anne. 
Dr. Johnson praised his sermons 
for their "style." 198:9. 

Somers, John. A leading Whig 
statesman in the time of William 
III. and Anne. He helped to draw 



up the Declaration of Rights 
which was presented to William 
and Mary. He secured for Addi- 
son a pension. 88:10. 

Somerset. Charles Seymour, sixth 
Duke of Somerset. Called " the 
Proud " — hardly distinguished 
otherwise. He refused to employ 
Addison as tutor to his son, possi- 
bly because future patronage 
would be expected of him. 145:11. 

Spectator. A paper published daily 
by Steele, Addison and others, 
Mar.,171J. to Dec. 1712; continued 
by Addison in 1714. 1.53:3. 

Spence, Joseph (1G99-1768). An 
English critic who I'^ft a volume 
of criticism and anecdotes. 148 :i. 

Squire Western. A character in 
Fielding's ro?n Jones. 225:4. 

Sumner, Rev. Charles R. Libra- 
rian to George IV., and after- 
wards Bishop of Winchester. 45 : 
Title. 

Surface, Joseph. A hypocrite In 
Sheridan's School for Scandal. 
235:15. 

Talus. An attendant on Sir Arte- 

gal. See Spenser's Fairy Queen, v. 

1,12. 113: 19. 
Tangier', or Tangiers. A seaport 

of Morocco. 129:22. 
Tatler. A periodical published by 

Steele, and Addison, 1709-11. 181: 

12. 
Teazle, Sir Peter. A character in 

Sheridan's School for Scandal. 235 : 

15. 
Temple, Sir William. An English 

statesman and author. Macaulay 

has an essay upon him. 191 :27. 
Theobald's. A country-seat in 

Hertfordshire. The residence of 

Lord Burleigh. Used as a palace 

by James I. 127:1. 
Thundering Legion. A legion of 

Christian soldiers under Marcus 



272 



GLOSSARY 



Aurelius, whose prayers for rain, 
according to legend, were answered 
by a thunderstorm which de- 
stroyed their enemies. Addison 
speaks of the event in his essay 
"Of the Christian Eellgion," vii. 
3. T36:20. 

Toland, John. An English deist 
who published a life of Milton in 
1698. 45:13 

Town Talk." A paper established 
by Steele, Dec. 17, 1715. But nine 
numbers were issued. 226:3. 

Vanbriigli'. See Conqrkvk. 197: 
15. 

V^ane, Sir Henry. An English Re- 
publican statesman, with a " dash 
of the fanatic." One of the Fifth 
Monarchy men. Beheaded 1662. 
Milton's 17th sonnet is addressed 
to him. 112:19. 

Victor Amade'us II., Duke of Sa- 
voy. He abandoned Louis and 
joined the Alliance in 1703. 172 :11. 

Walpole, Horace (1717-97). Tlie au- 
thor of The Castle of Otranto and 
many memoirs and letters. 192 :1. 

Walpole, Sir Robert (1676-1745). 
Not to be confounded with his 
eon Horace, For an account of 



him, see Macaulay's first essay od 
the Earl of Chatham and his essay 
on Horace Walpole. 5a:12. 

Wild of Sussex. Commonly called 
" Weald." The Weald Is a name 
given to a district comprising 
portions of the counties of Kent 
and Sussex in southeastern Eng- 
land. It is not certain whether 
the word is to be traced to the 
Anglo-Saxon iceald, •' forest." 
modern " wold," or whether it is 
an irregular form of wild. 129:18. 

Will's. A well-known London cof- 
fee-house in the time of Drydeu 
and Addison, known also as " The 
Wits' Coffee-House." The resort 
of poets and wits. 189:27. 

Wood, Anthony a. An iudustrious 
antiquary whose books on the 
antiquities and the great men of 
the University of Oxford have for 
more than two centuries been a 
mine of information. 45:13. 

Wycherley. See Congrevb. 197 : 
5. 

Xeres' (whence our word sherry). 
A town in southwestern Spain, 
famous for its exportation of 
wines. Macaulay seems to think 
it is a river. 97 :X4. 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 

(Adapted, and enlarged, from the Manual for the Study 
of English Classics, by George L. Marsh) 

HELPS TO STUDY 
Macaulay 

What is the date of Macaulay 's first contribution to 
the Edinburgh Review? How old was he at this time? 
Who was the editor of this magazine? How long did 
Macaulay continue to contribute to it (p. 15) ? 

Into what divisions do the Avritings of Macaulay fall 
(p. 19) ? Name six of Macaulay 's best essays. What is 
their literary significance (p. 38) ? 

Perry Picture 93 is a portrait of Macaulay. 

His Style 

What change did Macaulay bring about in the prose 
style of the first quarter of the nineteenth century (p. 
16) ? What has been the influence of his style on modern 
journalism (p. 39) ? 

Are the leading traits of Macaulay 's character — 
brusqueness, precision without fastidiousness, and self- 
confidence — illustrated in his style? 

His style is noted for clearness, simplicity, force, bal- 
anced and antithetical structure, use of illustration, and 
use of exaggerations; collect illustrations of all these 
qualities from particular passages of each essay. 

Note Macaulay 's use of words. Are they long, short, 
common, unusual, scientific, newly-coined, foreign, con- 
275 



276 APPENDIX 

Crete, general, pictorial, suggestive, of Latin or Saxon 
origin? What would you say of his use of words on page 
98? On page 161? 

Examine any ten consecutive pages for his use of words, 
and tabulate your conclusions. What is the average 
length of his words? 

Note his sentence length and structure. Are any of 
his sentences too short for unity? Any too long for 
unity? Are they prevailingly loose or periodic? Note 
examples of loose sentences. 

Are his sentences effective, artistic, overworked? 

Examine any fifteen consecutive pages and write out 
your conclusions as to the average number of words in 
each sentence. 

How many sentences have fewer than fifteen words? 
How many more than thirty? 

How many violate the normal order? 

How does Macaulay obtain emphasis? 

What do you think of the sentence length on page 97? 

Note the short sentences on page 165. Do you think it 
possible to connect these short sentences? 

On any two pages you may choose, how many complex 
sentences are there? How many compound? Is it pos- 
sible to convert any of his complex sentences into com- 
pound ones? 

HoAV does Macaulay connect paragraphs? 

Illustrate his unity of paragraph structure from any 
six pages you choose. 

What is the topic sentence of the second paragraph on 
.page 137? 

Selecting ten paragraphs, pick out and write down in 
your own words the topic sentence of each paragraph. 
Is it at the beginning, at the end, or in the middle of the 
paragraph? What relations do the other sentences bear 
to it? 



APPENDIX 277 

Does Maeaulay use an abundanc^e of figures of speech? 
Write out as many as you can find. 

What are the sources of his illustrations? Do they 
seem forced (p. 36) ? 

Does he assume that the reader is well informed? 

Does it seem true that he read everything and was in- 
capable of forgetting anything (p. 27) ? 

Notice his use of rhetorical questions on pages 92 and 
100. What effect do they have? 

Does he ever sacrifice truth to brilliancy? 

Collect glaring instances of hyperbole. 

Essay on Milton 

What proportion of this essay is taken up by Milton's 
life and writings and what by the Civil War and Macau- 
lay's theory of poetic composition? 

What is his plan in taking up these toj^ics in the order 
which he observes? How does this illustrate his faculty 
of organization (p. 24) ? How does he proceed to his 
subject? 

Write a synopsis of Maeaulay 's reasons for holding 
that a great poem produced in a civilized age is a more 
marked proof of genius than one written in an earlier 
age (pp. 50, 51). "^ 

What does he say of the enjoyment of poetry? Of the 
qualifications of a poet (p. 56) ? Of the general relation 
of poetry to civilization? 

Tabulate the main points of the comparison between 
Dante and Milton (pp. 67 ff.). 

Does the digression treating of the Civil Waf seem out 
of proportion (pp. 86-105) ? 

Sum up the moral that Maeaulay attempts to point< 
from the excesses of the Revolution (p. 99). 

Is Maeaulay open to the same charge he prefers against 
Hume (p. 94) ? Discuss the merits of Maeaulay 's argu- 



278 APPENDIX 

Tnent that Milton was justified in defending the execution 
of Charles I; in accepting- office under Cromwell. 

What is the purpose of Macaulay 's elaborate descrip- 
tion of the Puritans and the other parties (pp. 108 ff.) 
in relation to Milton? 

What is Macaulay 's opinion of Milton 's prose (p. 121) ? 

Characterize the conclusion of the essay. Why does 
Macaulay reserve for the end what he says of Milton 's 
personality? 

Perry Pictures 645-47 (of Charles I and his family) 
may be used with this essay. 

Essay on Addison 

In relation to Addison, see also the Sir Boger clc Cov- 
erley Papers, Lake English Classics edition. 

Compare the opening with that of the Essay on Milton. 
What is the purpose here (p. 125) ? 

What high praise does Macaulay give Addison (p. 128) ? 
Note and justify these points as you read the essay. 

Notice the general divisions of the essay (pp. l£5-29; 
130-42; 143-62; 163-88 ,v 189-219; 220-39; 240-48). Sum- 
marize in a few words the main topics treated under each 
division. Which are the more important divisions? Which 
seem out of proportion? Is the order in which Macairlay 
takes them up a good one? 

Systematize under appropriate headings what Macau- 
lay says of Addison 's life, his character; and his writ- 
ings. 

Is Macaulay fair to Steele's character (pp. 184 ff.) ? 
(See Introduction to the de Coverley Papers, Lake Class- 
ics.) Note how Macaulay continues to emphasize the 
contrast between Addison and Steele (p. 224). 

Can you justify the space and detailed treatment given 
to the Pope episode. In relation to Pope, see the Lake 
Classic edition of portions of Pope's Iliad. 

Note how skillfully Macaulay reiterates Addison's 



APPENDIX 279 

virtues at the end (p. 248). Are there any new charac- 
teristics of Addison introduced here? Show where each 
one not new has been introduced before. 

Characterize the conclusion. Compare it with the con- 
clusion of the Essay on Milton. 

Which of the two essays illustrates Macaulay's style 
to the better advantage? Summarize the chief points of 
difference in style between the two essays. In which is 
there a greater proportion of short sentences? 

THEME SUBJECTS 

1. Macaulay's career (pp. 15-20). 

2. Personal merits and defects of Macaulay (pp. 
24-42). (Themes illustrating separately the different 
characteristics developed in the pages just referred to 
may be assigned.) 

3. A study of Macaulay's sentences; of his para- 
graphs; of his choice of words; of his organization of 
the whole composition. ' 

4. The Essay on Milton, or the Essay on Addison, 
as a review. 

5. Discussion of Macaulay's view of the effect of 
civilization on poetry (pp. 50 ff.). 

6. Macaulay 's estimate of Milton 's Minor Poems 
(pp. 61-66). 

7. An answer to Macaulay's argument in favor of 
Milton's ** public conduct" (pp. 85 ff.). 

8. Character sketch of Milton. 

9. The nature of the Puritans (pp. 108-14). 

10. Summaries of the main divisions of the Essay on 
Addison (p. 278). 

11. A sketch of Addison's life (picked out carefully 
from the essay). 

12. Addison as a poet and dramatist (pp. 139, 167- 
172, 174, 210 ff.). 



280 APPENDIX 

13. Addison's political career. 

14. Addison's relations to Steele. (A defense of 
Steele may be attempted.) 

15. Addison and Pope (pp. 215, 226 ff.). 

16. Character sketch of Addison, 

17. Differences in method and style, between the 
Essay on Milton and the Essay on Addison. 

18. Macaulay's influence on modern style (pp. 40. 
41), with examples taken from newspaper or magazine 
articles. 

SELECTIONS FOR CLASS READING 

1. Poetry and civilization (pp. 50-56). 

2. Milton's work in dramatic form (pp. 61-66), 

3. Milton and Dante (pp. 67-71, 76-81). 

4. Macaulay on the defense of Charles I (pp. 92-95). 

5. The Puritans (pp. 108-14). 

6. Milton's character (pp. 116-24). 

7. Introductory estimate of Addison (pp. 127-29). 

8. Addisoii 's Campaign (pp. 167-72). 

9. Characteristics of Addison (pp. 179-83). 

10. Addison and Steele (pp. 184'-86). 

11. Addison's wit and humor (pp. 192-96). , 

12. The Spectator (pp. 204-9). 

13. Addison and Pope (pp. 226-36). 

14. Addison's death, and a concluding estimate (pp. 
24649). 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 

In the following parallel columns are given the most impor- 
tant dates in the history of English and American literature, 
from the time of Shakspere down to 1900. Special care. has 
been taken to include the classics commonly read in high 
schools, so that the historical background of any given classic 
will be apparent from the table: 



AMERICAN 



ENGLISH 

1594-5 Shakspere : Midsummer 

Night's Dream. 
1596 (or earlier): Romeo and 
Juliet. 

1598 (or earlier) : The Mer- 

chant of Venice. 

1599 Henry V. 
1599-1600 As You Like It. 



1601-1700 



1607 


Jamestown founded. 


1608 


J. Smith : A True Rela 
tion. 


1610 


Strachey : A True Rep 
ortory. 



1620 Plymouth Colony founded. 



1601 Julius Cwsar. 

1602 Hamlet; Twelfth Night 

(acted). 

1603 Queen Elizabeth died. 
1605 Bacon : Advancement of 

Learning. 



1610 



1611 



1612 



1614 



1616 
1620 



Shakspere : Macbeth 
(acted). 

The Tempest (acted), 

"King J a m e s" Bible 
printed. 

Bacon : Essays (first edi- 
tion, 1597). 

Raleigh : History of 
the World. 

Shakspere died. 

Bacon : Novum Organum. 



281 



282 



APPENDIX 



AMERICAN 



1624 J. Smith : The General 
History of Virginia. 

t630 Massachusetts Bay Col- 
ony founded. 

Bradford : History of 
Plimoth PUintdtion be- 
gun about this time. 

Winthrop : Journal be- 
gun, ended 1649. 



1635 R. Mather : Journal 

(written), 

1636 Harvard College estab- 

lished. 
1638 New Haven founded. 



1640 The Bay Psalm Book. 



1644 Williams : 
Tenent. 



The Bloudy 



1650 A, Bradstreet : Poems. 



1662 Wigglesworth : The Day 
of Doom. 



1681 C. Mather: Diary begun. 

1682 Philadelphia founded. 

1689 King William's War. 

1692 Salem witchcraft trials., 



ENGLISH 

1G23 Shakspere : Plays (first 
folio edition). 



1G27 Drayton: Ballad of Agiiu 
court. 



1G33 Milton : L' Allegro and 7P 

Penseroso. 
1634 Milton: Comus (acted). 



1638 Trial of John Hampden. 
Milton : Lycidas (pub- 
lished). 

1642 Theaters closed. 

Browne : Religio Medici. 
1644 Milton : Areopagitica. 

Battle of Marston Moor. 

1648 Herrick : Hesperides. 

1649 Charles I executed. 

16.'")3 Walton : The Compleat 

Angler. 
1G60 The monarchy restored. 

Pepys : Diary begun, end- 
ed 1669. 



1666 
1667 
1671 



1674 
1678 



1681 



1G82 

1688 



London fire. 

Milton : Paradise Lost. 

Milton : Paradise Re- 
gained; Samson Agon- 
istes. 

Milton died. 

Bunyan: Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress. 

Dryden : Absalom and 
Achitophel. 

Dryden : MacFlecknoe. 

The English Revolution. 



1G97 Dryden 
Feast. 



Alexander's 



APPENDIX 



283 



1701-1800 



AMERICAN 

1701 Yale College established. 
1702-13 Queen Anne's War. 

1702 C. Mather: Magnalia 

Christi Americana. 
1704 Boston News Letter estab- 
lished. 



1722 Edwards : Diary begun. 



1732 Washington born. 

1733 Franklin: Poor Richard's 

Almanac (begun). 

1741 Edwards : Sinners in the 
Hands of an Angry 
Qod. 



1755 Braddock's defeat. 

1756 Woolman : Journal (be- 

gun). 
1758 Franklin : The Waij to 
Wcaltli in Poor liich- 
ard's Almanac. 



ENGLISH 

1700 Dr.vden : Fables ("Pala- 
mon and Arcite," etc.). 

1702 Queen Anne ascended 
throne. 



1704 Swift : Tale of a Tut. 

1709 Steele and Addison : The 
Tatler begun. 

1711 Steele and Addison: The 

Spectator begun. 

1712 Pope: The Rape of the 

Lock. 

1714 Queen Anne died. 

1715 Pope : Translation of the 

Iliad (Books I-IV). 
1719 Defoe : Robinson Crusoe. 
1722 Defoe: Journal of the 

Plague Year, 
1726 Swift: OulUrer's Travels. 

Thomson : Winter. 
1728 Pope : Dunciad. 
1732 Pope : Essay on Man. 



1740 Richardson : Pamela. 



1742 Fielding: Joseph An- 
drews. 
1744 Death of Pope. 

1747 Gra5' : Ode on Eton Col- 

lege. 

1748 Richardson: Clarissa 

Harloice. 

1749 Fielding : Tom Jones. 

1750 Johnson: The Rambler 

(begun). 

1751 Gray : Elegy Written in 

a Country Churchyard. 
1755 Johnson : English Dic- 
tionary. 



284 



APPENDIX 



AMERICAN 



1765 Godfrey: Juvenile Poems 
(With The Prince of 
Parthia, the first Amer- 
ican drama). 
The Stamp Act. 



1771 Franklin : Autohiociraphy , 

first part, written. 
1773 P. Wheatley : Poems. 



Trumbull : M'Fingal. 

Henry : Speech in the 
Virginia Convention. 

The Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. 

Paine : Common Sense. 



1776 



1783 

1785 

1786 
1789 



1796 



1798 



The Treaty of Paris. 

D wight : The Conquest 

of Canaan. 
Preneau : Poems. 
Franklin : Autobiography, 

second part, written. 



Washington : Farewell 

Address. 
r.rown: Wicland. 
J. Hopkinson : Hail 

Columbia. 



ENGLISH 

1759 Sterne : Tristram Shandy 

(begun). 
Johnson : Rasselas. 

1760 King George III on 

throne. 
1762 Macpherson : The Poems 
of Ossian. 

1764 Walpole: The Castle of 

Otranto. 
Goldsmith : The Traveler. 

1765 Percy : Reliques of An- 

cient Poetry. 



1766 Goldsmith : Vicar of 
Wakefield. 

1770 Goldsmith : Deserted Vil- 

lage. 

1771 Encyclopedia Britannica, 

first edition. 
1773 Goldsmith : She Stoops 
to Conquer (acted). 

1775 Burke : Speech on Con- 

ciliation. 
Sheridan : The Rivals. 

1776 Gibbon : Decline and Fall 

of Roman Empire. 

1779 Johnson: Lives of the 

Poets. 
1783 Crabbe : The Village. 

1785 Cowper : The Task. 

1786 Burns : Poems. 

1789 Blake : Songs of Inno- 
cence. 

1791 Boswell: Life of Dr. 
Johnson. 



1798 Wordsworth and Cole- 
ridge : Lyrical Ballads 
("The Ancient Mari- 
ner," etc.). 



1801-1900 



1803 The Louisiana Purchase. 



1805 Scott : Lay of the Last 

Minstrel. 
1 S08 Scott : Marmion. 



APPENDIX 



285 



AMKUICAN 



1809 Irving : Knickerhocker'a 
History of New York. 



1812-14 War with England. 



1814 Key : The S tar-Spangled 
Banner. 

1816 Freneau : Poems. 



1817 Bryant : Thanatopsis. 



1819 Drake : The American 

Flag. 

1820 Irving: The Sketch Book. 
The Missouri Compromise. 



1824 



The Spy. 
Poems. 



Cooper : 

Bryant : 

Irving : Bracebridge Hall. 

Payne : Home, Sweet 

Home. 
Cooper : The Pilot. 

Tales of a Trav- 



rving : 
eler. 

1825 Webster : The Bunker 

Hill Monument. 

1826 Cooper : The I^ast of the 

Mohicans. 

1827 P o e : Tamerlane and 

Other Poems. 



1831 Poe : Poems. 

1832 Irving: The Alhamhra. 
S. F. Smith : America. 

1833 Poe : MS. Found in a 

Bottle. 



ENGLISH 

1809 Byron : English Bards 

and Scotch Reviewers. 

1810 Scott : The Lady of the 

Lake. 

1811 J. Austen : Sense and 

SensiMUty. 

1812 Byron : Childe Harold, 

I, II. 

1813 Southey : Life of Nelson. 

1814 Scott : Waverley. 
Wordsworth : The Excur- 
sion. 

1815 The Battle of Waterloo. 

1816 Byron : The Prisoner of 

Chillon; Childe Harold, 
III. 
Coleridge : Christabel. 

1817 Keats : Poems (first col- 

lection). 

1818 Byro« : Childe Harold, 

IV. 

1819 Scott: Ivanhoe. 



1820 Keats : Poems. 
Shelley : Prometheus Un- 
bound. 

1821 Shelley : Adonais. 

De Quincey : Confessions 
of an Opium Eater. 

1823 Scott : Quentin Durtvavd. 
Lamb : Essays of Elia. 

1824 Landor : Imaginary Con- 

versations. 

1825 Macaulay : Essay on Mil- 

ton. 



1S27 


A. and 
Poems 


C. Tennyson : 
by Two Broth- 




ers. 




1828 


Carlyle : 


Essay on Burns. 


1830 


Tenny_son 
Lyrica 


: Poems Chiefly 


1832 


Death of Scott; The Re- 
form Bill. 



1833 Carlyle : Sartor Resartus. 
Tennyson : Poems. 
Browning : Pauline. 



286 

AMERICAN 

1835 Drake : The Culprit Fay, 

etc. 

1836 Holmes : Poems. 
Emerson,: Nature. 

1837 Emerson : Tlie American 

Scholar. 

Hawthorne : Twice-Told 
Talcs, first series. 

Whittier : Poems. 
1839 Poe : Tales of the Grotes- 
que and Arabesque. 

Longfellow : Voices of the 
Night. 

1840. Dana : Two Years Before 
the Mast. 

1841 Emerson : Essays, first 

series. 
Longfellow: Ballads and 
Other Poems. 

1842 Hawthorne : " Twice-Told 

Tales, second series. 



1843 Poe: The Oold-Bug. 

Prescott : Conquest of 
Mexico. 



1844 Emerson : Essays, second 

series. 
Lowell : Poems. 

1845 Poe : The Raven and 

Other Poems. 

1846 Elawthorne : Mosses from 

an Old Manse. 
1846-48 War with Mexico. 

1847 Emerson : Poems. 
Longfellow : Evangeline. 
Parkman : The Oregon 

Trail. 

1848 Lowell : Vision of Sir 

Launfal. 

1849 Irving : Oliver Goldsmith. 



1S50 Emerson : Representative 
Men. 
Hnwtliorne: The l^carlet 
Letter. 



APPENDIX 



I 



ENGLISH 

1835 Browning : Paracelsus. 



1S36 Dickons : Pickwick Pa- 
pers. 

1837 Victoria became Queen. 

De Quincey : Revolt of 

the Tartars. 
C a r 1 y 1 e : The French 

Revolution. 



1840 Macaulay : Essay oil 

Clive. 

1841 Browning : Pippa Passes. 
Macaulay : Essay on War- 
ren Hastings. 

1842 Macaulay: Lays of Ati\ 

cient Rome. ' 

Browning : Dramatic 
Lyrics. 
i843 Dickens : A Christmas 
Carol. 
Macaulay : Essay on Ad- 
dison. 
Ruskin : Modern Painters, 
Vol. I. 
1844 E. B. Browning : Poems. 



1845 Browning : Dramatic Ro- 

mances and Lyrics. 

1846 Dickens : The Cricket oA 

the Hearth. 



1847 De Quincey : Joan of Arc. 
Tennyson : The Princess. 
Thackeray : Vaniti/ Fair. 
C. Bronte : Jane Eyre. 

1848 Macaulay : ' History of 

England, I, IL 

1849 De Quincey: Tlie English 

Mail Coach. 

M. Arnold : The Strayed 
Reveller, etc. 
1S50 Tennyson : Tn Memoriam. 

Dickens : David Copper- 
field. 



APPENDIX 



287 



AMERICAN 

1851 Hawthorne : The Bouse 

0/ the iSeven Oables. 
Parkman : The Conspir- 
acy of Pontiac. 

1852 Mrs. Stowe : Uncle Tom's 

Cabin. 



1854 Thoreau : Walden. 

1855 Longfellow : Hiaicatha. 
Whitman : Leaves of 

Grass. 
1S56 Motley : Rise of the Dutch 
Republic. 
Curtis : Prue and I. 



1858 Longfellow : Courtship of 
Miles ki tan dish. 
Holmes : Autocrat of the 
Breakfast Table. 



1861-65 The Civil War. 



1862-66 Lowell : Biglow Pa- 
pers, II. 

1863 Longfellow : Tales of a 
Wayside Inn. 



1865 Whitman : Drum Taps. 

1866 Whittier: Snow-Bound. 



1851 



1852 



ENGLISH 

Thackeray : Lectures on 

English Humorists. 
G. Meredith : Poems. 



Thackeray : Henry Es- 
mond. 

1853 M. Arnold: Poems 
("Sohrab and Rustum," 
etc.). 

Mrs. Gaskell : Cranford. 



1855 
1856 

1857 
1859 



R. Browning : Men and 

Women. 
Tennyson : Maud. 
Macaulay : E s s ay s on 

Johnson and Goldsmith. 
Mrs. Browning : Aurora 

Leigh. 
flughes : Tom Brown's 

School Days. 



Tennyson : Idylls of the 

King. 
Dickens : A Tale of Two 

Cities. 
G. Eliot: 
Meredith 



1860 
1861 

1862 
1863 
1864 

1865 
1866 



Adam Bede. 
Ordeal of 

Richard Fever el. 
Darwin : The Origin of 

Species. 
G. Eliot: The Mill on 

the Floss. 
G. Eliot : Silas Marner. 
Reade : The Cloister and 

the Hearth. 
Palgrave : The Golden 

Treasury. 
Meredith : Modern Love, 

etc. 
G. Eliot : Romola. 



Browning : 

sonce. 
Swinburne 

Calydon. 
R u s k i n : 

Lilies. 
Ruskin : A Crown of Wild 

Olive. 



Dramatis Per- 
Atalanta in 
Sesame and 



288 



APPENDIX 



1868 



1870 
1871 

1873 
1876 

1877 

1879 

1881 



1886 
1887 

1888 

1890 
1891 



AMERICAN 

Hale: The Man Without 
a Country, etc. 



Bret Harte : The Luck 
of Roaring Camp, etc. 

Howells : Their Wedding 
Journey. 



Aldrich : Marjorie Daw, 
etc. 

Mark Twain : Tom Saw- 
yer. 

Lanier : Poems. 



Cable : Old Creole Days. 
Stockton : Rudder Grange. 



Whlttier : 
Missive. 



The King's 



H. Jackson : Sonnets and 

Lyrics. 
M. E. Wilkins : A Humble 

Romance, etc. 



Whitman 
Boughs. 



E. Dickinson 
first series. 



Nov&mher 



Poem 



Whitman 
Fancy. 



Goodbye, My 



1898 War with Spain. 



ENGLISH 

1868 Browning : The Ring and 

the Book. 
1868-70 Morris : The Earthly 
Paradise. 

1869 Tennyson. The H oljA 

Grail, etc. * 

1870 D. G. Rossetti: Poemsl 

1871 Swinburne ; Songs Befori 

Sunrise. 

1872 Tennyson : Gareth am 

Lynette, etc. 

1873 Arnold : Literature ant 

Dogma. 

1876 Morris : Sigurd the Vol- 
sung. 



1878 Stevenson : An Inland 

Voyage. 

1879 Stevenson : Travels toith 

a Donkey. 
Meredith : The Egoist. 

1881 D. G. Rossetti : Ballads 

and Sonnets. 

1882 Stevenson : New Arabia 

Nights. 

1883 Stevenson : Treasure Is 

land. 
1886 Stevenson : Kidnapped 



] 



1887 Stevenson : The Merry 

Men ( "M a r k h e i m," 
etc.). 

1888 Kipling: Plain Tales 

from the Hills. 
Barrier Auld Licht 
Idylls. 

1889 Browning: Asolando. 



1891 Kipling: Life's Handi- 

cap. 

1892 Tennyson died. 

1893 Conington : Translation 

of Aeneid published. 
Barrie : Two of Them. 

1901 Queen Victoria died. 



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